Amid a growing and public conflict between the Trump administration’s health agencies and professional, independent medical groups, experts say family doctors are probably the best place to get reliable, first-hand information about vaccines and other drugs.
Co-signed by 44 such groups, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics statement People are opposing a new recommendation from the American Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a high-level government advisory panel on vaccine safety and effectiveness.
ACIP voted that the hepatitis B vaccine, which is usually given to all newborns in the US within the first hours of birth, would be optional for all except those at highest risk of infection. Hepatitis B is a vaccine-preventable viral infection that causes liver disorders, including often fatal cirrhosis and cancer.
In September, ACIP also recommended an MMRV vaccine that combines doses of mumps, mumps, rubella, and varicella, which cause chickenpox, to be divided.
The changes come despite a lack of evidence that the vaccines cause harm and vaccine dosing schedules being adapted despite years of data.
“The biggest concern that those of us who are looking at these recommendations have in mind is how this is creating mistrust about our vaccines and our vaccine schedule and the data that we have,” Jody Guest, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told DW.
“It’s messy, it’s confusing.”
Controversy arose from Kennedy’s restructuring of health structures.
Typically, the US federal public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), implements its ACIP recommendations as guidance for US states, which have ultimate responsibility for health policy within their borders.
CDC guidance is generally supported by top medical groups and followed by health insurers to decide policy coverage.
But ACIP and CDC have been overhauled this year with new appointments by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a well-known anti-vaccine campaigner.
This “new group of people [is] “There is a great deal of skepticism, if not outright hostility, toward vaccines,” said Josh Sharfstein, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University.
Sharfstein, a former Maryland state health secretary appointed under the Democratic governor, told DW that ACIP’s key decision-making processes have been abandoned under Kennedy’s new panel.
“Integrity has been lost in the decision-making process on vaccines,” Sharfstein said. “Scientists are not making presentations to advisers, there are lawyers who have had to face all kinds of challenges, including accuracy [their own] Past statements, who are the ones providing information to the advisors?
“It’s more than just a different conclusion, it’s a completely different process,” Sharfstein said. “This is a process that has been derailed.”
In the background is Kennedy’s long-stated view that some vaccines cause autism. He recently directed an update to the CDC “Autism and Vaccines” The safety information page, which now says that key research on the alleged autism-vaccine link “has been ignored by health officials” and “the statement that ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.”
However, there have been several studies reviewing millions of births that have found no link between vaccines – usually the MMR vaccine – and autism. an expert committee of the World Health Organization Reaffirmed in December 2025Medical professionals have said that claims of increased rates of autism in the US are due to expanded definitions of the condition and improved diagnostic methods, not vaccinations, many Page on CDC website still say vaccines, which include MMR vaccineAre safe.
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t important things to study in vaccine safety,” Sharfstein said. “The goal should always be to make the vaccines safer and the risks better understood. You may believe that the benefits outweigh the risks of the vaccines and still want to make the vaccines as safe as possible.
“What’s going on now, I don’t think it’s driven by any particular type of study. I think it’s related to a very general hostility toward vaccines.”
Family doctors now have a safe voice
As Kennedy reorganized key federal health structures, resignations of long-serving science staff within his health agencies followed.
Independent medical groups, academies, and experts are concerned that information from federal health agencies is no longer reliable and have begun publishing their own advice to the public.
James Campbell, vice chair of the infectious diseases committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics, called the ACIP meetings a “shameless attempt to sow fear and distrust in the vaccination that has saved countless lives.”
Following the recommendations, about a dozen states – all led by Democrats – said they would reject any changes to the vaccine program. Health insurers have said that despite the changes to ACIP, they will continue to offer coverage for hepatitis B vaccination at birth.
A new survey The study, commissioned by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, also found that by a 2-1 margin American adults would now be more likely to seek advice from the AMA than from the CDC.
Jason Schwartz, a vaccine and vaccination policy researcher at Yale University in the US, told DW that the opposition now being mounted by the US medical community is “an attempt to undermine and undermine what the overwhelming majority of the mainstream public health and medical community sees as an inappropriate change in our recommendations regarding vaccines from the federal level.”
But he and other experts who spoke to DW said messaging conflicts between the federal government, states and top medical groups could be confusing.
“I think the position of the professional associations, the doctors, the nurses, is much more credible among the American people right now,” Sharfstein said.
Schwartz described relations with family health care providers as “a backstop” amid conflict between high-level doctors’ groups and Kennedy’s health department.
“Having that relationship with a healthcare provider that a family knows, can talk to, listen to their questions and concerns, can help clarify some of the confusion or uncertainty that they’re undoubtedly feeling to some degree,” Schwartz said.
Against the effects on America and the world?
America’s traditional role as a global health leader is also declining.
Many countries have modeled their long-standing public health agencies, vaccine advisory committees and scientific review structures on the US.
Some people also look to agencies such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for drug approval in the US, as a valuable reference for their own drug approval.
“I don’t know that other countries should currently look to the United States for leadership on these decisions, and that’s very unfortunate,” said Guest, the infectious disease expert.
Changes in procedure at US federal health agencies, and an increase in language that maligns long-established scientific research on vaccine safety, could also affect public perceptions about vaccination and therapy outside the US.
“I think this could really shape the future of vaccination efforts globally,” Schwartz said.
Sharfstein pointed to cuts in global aid, including vaccine supplies and funding for many low- and middle-income countries, as further actions that were “undermining a very positive role the U.S. government has played in the past.”
He said the US could lose its ‘measles-free’ status amid continued outbreaks of the disease due to vaccine hesitancy and lack of childhood vaccinations. 1,935 cases of the disease were reported in 2025, while 285 cases were reported in 2024 and 59 cases in 2023.
Edited by: Carla Bleiker
DW’s Collaborative Research team contributed to this report