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Tag: Jake Scott

  • What are parents to do as doctors clash with Trump administration over vaccines?

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    It’s normal for parents, or anyone, to have questions about vaccinations — but what happens if your pediatrician urges a shot that’s under attack by the Trump administration?

    That’s getting more likely: The nation’s leading doctors groups are in an unprecedented standoff with federal health officials who have attacked long-used, lifesaving vaccines.

    The revolt by pediatricians, obstetricians, family physicians, infectious disease experts and internists came to a head when an advisory panel handpicked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged an end to routine newborn vaccination against hepatitis B, a virus that can cause liver failure or liver cancer.

    That vaccine saves lives, helped child infections plummet and has been given safely to tens of millions of children in the U.S. alone, say the American Academy of Pediatrics and other doctors groups that vowed Tuesday to keep recommending it.

    But that’s not the only difference. That Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices now is examining possible changes to the entire childhood vaccination schedule, questioning certain ingredients and how many doses youngsters receive.

    Pushing back, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued its own recommendations for youngsters. Other medical groups — plus some city and state public health departments that have banded together — also are issuing their own advice on certain vaccines, which largely mirrors pre-2025 federal guidance.

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    “We owe our patients a consistent message informed by evidence and lived experience, not messages biased by political imperative,” Dr. Ronald Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told reporters Tuesday.

    But Nahass acknowledged the inevitable consumer confusion, recounting a relative calling him last weekend for advice about hepatitis B vaccination for her new grandbaby.

    “Most Americans don’t have a Cousin Ronnie to call. They are left alone with fear and mistrust,” he said, urging parents to talk with their doctors about vaccines.

    New guidelines without new data concern doctors

    Hepatitis B isn’t the only vaccine challenge. Kennedy’s health department recently changed a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage to contradict the longtime scientific conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism. Federal agencies also moved to restrict COVID-19 vaccinations this fall, and are planning policy changes that could restrict future flu and coronavirus shots.

    But when it comes to vaccine advice, “for decades, ACIP was the gold standard,” said Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease physician and Stanford University researcher.

    The panel once routinely enlisted specialists in specific diseases for long deliberations of the latest science and safety data, resulting in recommendations typically adopted not only by the CDC but by the medical field at large, he said.

    Last week’s meeting of Kennedy’s panel, which includes vaccine skeptics, marked a radical departure. CDC specialists weren’t allowed to present data on hepatitis B, the childhood vaccine schedule or questions about vaccine ingredients. Few of the committee members have public health experience, and some expressed confusion about the panel’s proposals.

    At one point, a doctor called in to say the panel was misrepresenting her study’s findings. And the panel’s chairman wondered why one dose of yellow fever vaccine protected him during a trip to Africa when U.S. children get three doses of hepatitis B vaccine. The hepatitis B vaccine is designed to protect children for life from a virus they can encounter anywhere, not just on a trip abroad. And other scientists noted it was carefully studied for years to prove the three-dose course offers decades of immunity — evidence that a single dose simply doesn’t have.

    “If they’ve got new data, I’m all for it — let’s see it and have a conversation,” said Dr. Kelly Gebo, an infectious disease specialist and public health dean at George Washington University, who watched for that. “I did not see any new data,” so she’s not changing her vaccine advice.

    Committee members argued that most babies’ risk of hepatitis B infection is very low and that earlier research on infant shot safety was inadequate.

    Especially unusual was a presentation from a lawyer who voiced doubt about studies that proved benefits of multiple childhood vaccines and promoted discredited research pointing to harms.

    “I don’t think at any point in the committee’s history, there was a 90-minute uninterrupted presentation by someone who wasn’t a physician, a scientist, or a public health expert on the topic — let alone someone who, who makes his living in vaccine litigation,” said Jason Schwartz, a vaccine policy expert at Yale University.

    By abandoning data and the consensus of front-line doctors, the ACIP is “actively burning down the credibility that made its recommendations so powerful,” added Stanford’s Scott. “Most parents will still follow their pediatricians, and AAP is holding the line here. But the mixed messages are precisely what erode confidence over time.”

    Parents already have a choice — they need solid guidance

    Trump administration health officials say it’s important to restore choice to parents and to avoid mandates. That’s how the panel’s hepatitis B recommendation was framed — that parents who really want it could get their children vaccinated later.

    Parents already have a choice, said Dr. Aaron Milstone of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The government makes population-wide recommendations while families and their doctors tailor choices to each person’s health needs.

    But many doctors don’t — or can’t — do their own lengthy scientific review of vaccines and thus had relied on the ACIP and CDC information, Yale’s Schwartz noted.

    They “rely on trusted expert voices to help navigate what is, even in the best of times, a complicated landscape regarding the evidence for vaccines and how best to use them,” he said.

    That’s a role that the pediatricians and other doctors groups, plus those multistate collaborations, aim to fill with their own guidelines — while acknowledging it will be a huge task.

    For now, “ask your questions, bring your concerns and let us talk about them,” said Dr. Sarah Nosal, of the American Academy of Family Physicians, urging anyone with vaccine questions to have an open conversation with their doctor.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • RFK Jr. says he’s following ‘gold standard’ science. Here’s what to know

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    The message is hammered over and over, in news conferences, hearings and executive orders: President Donald Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., say they want the government to follow “gold standard” science.

    Scientists say the problem is that they are often doing just the opposite by relying on preliminary studies, fringe science or just hunches to make claims, cast doubt on proven treatments or even set policy.

    This week, the nation’s top public health agency changed its website to contradict the scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. The move shocked health experts nationwide.

    Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August, told reporters Wednesday that Kennedy seems to be “going from evidence-based decision making to decision-based evidence making.”

    It was the latest example of the Trump administration’s challenge to established science.

    U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during the Western Governors’ Association meeting Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rebecca Noble)

    In September, the Republican president gave out medical advice based on weak or no evidence. Speaking directly to pregnant women and to parents, he told them not to take acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. He repeatedly made the fraudulent and long-disproven link between autism and vaccines, saying his assessment was based on a hunch.

    “I have always had very strong feelings about autism and how it happened and where it came from,” he said.

    At a two-day meeting this fall, Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisers to the CDC raised questions about vaccinating babies against hepatitis B, an inoculation long shown to reduce disease and death drastically.

    “The discussion that has been brought up regarding safety is not based on evidence other than case reports and anecdotes,” said Dr. Flor Munoz, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.

    During the country’s worst year for measles in more than three decades, Kennedy cast doubt on the measles vaccine while championing unproven treatments and alleging that the unvaccinated children who died were “already sick.”

    Scientists say the process of getting medicines and vaccines to market and recommended in the United States has, until now, typically relied on gold standard science. The process is so rigorous and transparent that much of the rest of the world follows the lead of American regulators, giving the OK to treatments only after U.S. approval.

    This April 1, 2025 photo shows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention building in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, file)

    This April 1, 2025 photo shows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention building in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, file)

    Gold standard science

    The gold standard can differ because science and medicine is complicated and everything cannot be tested the same way. That term simply refers to the best possible evidence that can be gathered.

    “It completely depends on what question you’re trying to answer,” said Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease physician and Stanford University researcher.

    What produces the best possible evidence?

    There are many different types of studies. The most rigorous is the randomized clinical trial.

    It randomly creates two groups of subjects that are identical in every way except for the drug, treatment or other question being tested. Many are “blinded studies,” meaning neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is in which group. This helps eliminate bias.

    It is not always possible or ethical to conduct these tests. This is sometimes the case with vaccine trials, “because we have so much data showing how safe and effective they are, it would be unethical to withhold vaccines from a particular group,” said Jessica Steier, a public health scientist and founder of the Unbiased Science podcast.

    Studying the long-term effect of a behavior can be impossible. For example, scientists could not possibly study the long-term benefit of exercise by having one group not exercise for years.

    Instead, researchers must conduct observational studies, where they follow participants and track their health and behavior without manipulating any variables. Such studies helped scientists discover that fluoride reduces cavities, and later lab studies showed how fluoride strengthens tooth enamel.

    But the studies have limitations because they can often only prove correlation, not causation. For example, some observational studies have raised the possibility of a link between autism risk and using acetaminophen during pregnancy, but more have not found a connection. The big problem is that those kinds of studies cannot determine if the painkiller really made any difference or if it was the fever or other health problem that prompted the need for the pill.

    Real world evidence can be especially powerful

    Scientists can learn even more when they see how something affects a large number of people in their daily lives.

    That real-world evidence can be valuable to prove how well something works — and when there are rare side effects that could never be detected in trials.

    Such evidence on vaccines has proved useful in both ways. Scientists now know there can be rare side effects with some vaccines and can alert doctors to be on the lookout. The data has proved that vaccines provide extraordinary protection from disease. For example, measles was eliminated in the U.S. but it still pops up among unvaccinated groups.

    That same data proves vaccines are safe.

    “If vaccines caused a wave of chronic disease, our safety systems — which can detect 1-in-a-million events — would have seen it. They haven’t,” Scott told a U.S. Senate subcommittee in September.

    The best science is open and transparent

    Simply publishing a paper online is not enough to call it open and transparent. Specific things to look for include:

    — Researchers set their hypothesis before they start the study and do not change it.

    — The authors disclose their conflicts of interest and their funding sources.

    — The research has gone through peer review by subject-matter experts who have nothing to do with that particular study.

    — The authors show their work, publishing and explaining the data underlying their analyses.

    — They cite reliable sources.

    This transparency allows science to check itself. Dr. Steven Woloshin, a Dartmouth College professor, has spent much of his career challenging scientific conclusions underlying health policy.

    “I’m only able to do that because they’re transparent about what they did, what the underlying source resources were, so that you can come to your own conclusion,” he said. “That’s how science works.”

    Know the limits of anecdotes and single studies

    Anecdotes may be powerful. They are not data.

    Case studies might even be published in top journals, to help doctors or other professionals learn from a particular situation. But they are not used to making decisions about how to treat large numbers of patients because every situation is unique.

    Even single studies should be considered in the context of previous research. A new one-off blockbuster study that seems to answer every question definitively or reaches a conclusion that runs counter to other well-conducted studies needs a very careful look.

    Uncertainty is baked into science.

    “Science isn’t about reaching certainty,” Woloshin said. “It’s about trying to reduce uncertainty to the point where you can say, ‘I have good confidence that if we do X, we’ll see result Y.’ But there’s no guarantee.”

    Doing your own research? Questions to ask

    If you come across a research paper online, in a news story or cited by officials to change your mind about something, here are some questions to ask:

    — Who did the research? What is their expertise? Do they disclose conflicts of interest?

    — Who paid for this research? Who might benefit from it?

    — Is it published in a reputable journal? Did it go through peer review?

    — What question are the researchers asking? Who or what are they studying? Are they making even comparisons between groups?

    — Is there a “limitations” section where the authors point out what their research cannot prove, other factors that could influence their results, or other potential blind spots? What does it say?

    — Does it make bold, definitive claims? Does it fit into the scientific consensus or challenge it? Is it too good or bad to be true?

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    AP Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • FACT FOCUS: RFK Jr.’s reasons for cutting mRNA vaccine not supported by evidence

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    Although mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. incorrectly argued they are ineffective to justify the Department of Health and Human Service’s recent decision to cancel $500 million in government-funded research projects to develop new vaccines using the technology.

    The longtime vaccine critic said in an X video posted Tuesday evening that mRNA vaccines do not adequately prevent upper respiratory infections such as COVID-19 and the flu, advocating instead for the development vaccines that use other processes.

    COVID-19 is the only virus for which real-world data on mRNA vaccine effectiveness is currently available, as mRNA vaccines for other diseases, including the flu, are still under development. The two scientists whose discoveries enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 won a Nobel Prize in 2023 for their work.

    Kennedy’s claim ignores how mRNA vaccines work, according to experts. They prevent against severe infection and death, but cannot completely prevent an infection from occurring in the first place. Plus, years of research supports the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines that use mRNA technology.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    KENNEDY: “As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract.”

    THE FACTS: His claim is contradicted by scientific evidence. Countless studies show that vaccinated individuals fare far better against COVID-19 infections than those who are unvaccinated, while others have estimated that COVID-19 vaccines prevented millions of deaths during the global pandemic. The mRNA vaccines do not prevent respiratory diseases entirely, experts say. Rather, they can prevent more serious illness that leads to complications and death. For example, an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 may prevent an infection in the upper respiratory tract that feels like a bad cold from spreading to the lower respiratory tract, where it could affect one’s ability to breathe.

    “A vaccine cannot block a respiratory infection,” said Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious diseases physician and clinical associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. “That’s never been the standard for a respiratory virus vaccine. And it’s never been the expectation, and it’s never been that realistic.” He called Kennedy’s claim “misguided.”

    Jeff Coller, a professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University, had a similar outlook.

    “Vaccinations don’t have to be neutralizing, meaning that you’re not going to get COVID,” he said. “But the important part of a vaccination is that they reduce hospitalization and death. And a reduction in hospitalization and death is proof of an effective vaccine.”

    HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Vaccines have traditionally required growing viruses or pieces of viruses called proteins and then purifying them. Then a small dose of the vaccine is injected to train the body how to recognize when a real infection hits so it’s ready to fight back. But this method takes a long time. The mRNA technology speeds up the process and allows existing vaccines to be updated more quickly.

    The “m” in mRNA stands for messenger because the vaccine carries instructions for our bodies to make proteins. Scientists figured out how to harness that natural process for vaccines by making mRNA in a lab. They take a snippet of the genetic code that carries instructions for making the protein they want the vaccine to target. Injecting that snippet instructs the body to become its own mini-vaccine factory, making enough copies of the protein for the immune system to recognize and react.

    Scott explained that mRNA vaccines are not a “magic force field” that the immune system can use to block an infection, as it can’t detect whether a virus is nearby. It can only respond to a virus that has already entered the body. In the case of COVID-19, this means that the virus could cause an upper respiratory tract infection — a cold, essentially — but would be significantly less likely to cause more severe consequences elsewhere.

    Myriad studies on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines have been published since they first became available in late 2020. Although protection does wane over time, they provide the strongest barrier against severe infection and death.

    For example, a 2024 study by the World Health Organization found COVID-19 vaccines reduced deaths in the WHO’s European region by at least 57%, saving more than 1.4 million lives since their introduction in December 2020.

    A 2022 study published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases found that nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year. Researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom. The main finding — that 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented — is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period. Using only reported COVID-19 deaths, the same model yielded 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines.

    Another 2022 study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, reported that two mRNA vaccines were more than 90% effective against COVID-19.

    Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to facilitate the development and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, began under the first Trump administration.

    “What I don’t understand is why is President Trump is allowing RFK Jr. to undermine his legacy that led to a medical intervention that literally saved millions of lives?” Coller said. “Why is Trump allowing RFK to undermine U.S. leadership in biomedical research and drug development?”

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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