So the whole RFK Jr. anti-vax train has been railroading public health in completely the wrong direction. I took a few minutes to review the major changes that have been made and the reasoning behind them. The summaries below come from publicly available reporting and source materials.

According to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, one of the most significant changes was a reduction in the CDC’s universally recommended childhood vaccine schedule. The recommendation dropped from 17 vaccines to 11, shifting several vaccines—including rotavirus, influenza, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and meningitis—from routine recommendations to a “shared clinical decision-making” model between parents and healthcare providers.

Now, the last part sounds reasonable. People should absolutely have conversations with their healthcare providers about vaccines. That’s called practicing medicine.

The rest of it, however, is pure, unadulterated hogwash.

It reflects a growing mindset that children should simply catch childhood diseases rather than prevent them through vaccination. It also shifts responsibility away from routine public health measures that have been extraordinarily successful for decades.

Let’s be honest for a minute. Vaccines in this country—and pretty much everywhere else in the developed world—are safe. They are tried and true. Their side effects are well documented. Their risks are known. More importantly, they have dramatically reduced the prevalence of diseases that once hospitalized, disabled, or killed children on a routine basis.

I still fail to understand the romantic obsession some people seem to have with childhood diseases.

RFK Jr. was born during a period when vaccines had already transformed childhood health. Like most of us, he grew up in a world largely spared from seeing what polio, measles, meningitis, and other childhood diseases actually looked like. The only disease many of us routinely encountered was chickenpox, and for some reason there still seems to be nostalgia for the old “disease party” mentality.

As a side note, your immunity is not magically superior because you caught the disease naturally. The immune system responds to exposure. Vaccines simply provide that exposure without requiring the disease itself to take a shot at killing you first.

Reducing routine recommendations may not sound significant on paper, but many of the vaccines affected are given during adolescence. Hepatitis and meningitis vaccines are particularly important as children move into high school, college, military service, and other environments where disease transmission becomes more likely.

Which brings me to a simple question:

Why?

Why change any of this?

These programs have served us remarkably well for decades.

If you don’t believe me, look no further than the measles outbreaks we’ve already seen in recent years. Apparently some people looked at a disease we had largely controlled and thought, “You know what this country needs? More measles.”

This did not need to be gutted.

Another major change involved COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC and FDA ended routine recommendations for healthy pregnant women and healthy children, instead limiting routine recommendations primarily to older adults and people at higher risk.

Here’s the thing: COVID is still here.

As an immunologist friend of mine once put it, COVID has largely moved from a pandemic phase into an endemic phase. It is nowhere near as deadly as it was in the beginning, but it remains a circulating infectious disease that continues to evolve.

Vaccination remains one of the tools available to reduce risk.

I know the anti-vaccine crowd loves to revisit the argument that the original vaccines were “experimental.” The reality is more nuanced than that. The vaccines were thoroughly studied and authorized under emergency conditions because the world was in the middle of a global crisis.

What people often mean when they say “experimental” is that long-term data didn’t yet exist.

Of course it didn’t.

Long-term data requires time.

At that moment we were trying to prevent mass illness and death. We were attempting to save lives during an ongoing pandemic, not secretly implant microchips, rewrite DNA, or participate in whatever conspiracy theory was making the rounds on Facebook that week.

Sometimes solving a large-scale public health problem requires collective action and a little self-sacrifice.

Unfortunately, we seem to live in an era where many people believe their personal opinion automatically outweighs expertise, evidence, and reality.

Then came perhaps the most concerning change.

Kennedy removed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with individuals who are significantly more skeptical of vaccines.

That’s a very polite way of saying he replaced experienced advisors with people who largely agree with him.

Subsequently, this newly constituted panel voted against recommending combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccines for young children.

Thankfully, a federal court later blocked several of these changes, ruling that proper federal procedures had not been followed.

There were also major changes involving vaccine development itself.

Twenty-two contracts involving mRNA vaccine technology were canceled, and additional testing requirements were imposed on newer vaccines.

Every time I hear criticism of modern vaccines, it eventually circles back to mRNA technology.

Let’s clear something up.

mRNA vaccines do not rewrite your DNA.

They do not alter your genetic code.

They do not change who you are.

That’s not how any of this works.

The technology simply allows the body to recognize and respond to a threat. It represents an important evolution in vaccine science and reduces dependence on older manufacturing methods.

The fear surrounding mRNA technology comes largely from misunderstanding, misinformation, and outright conspiracy theories.

Again, hogwash.

Although today I’m using that word because it’s kinder than the alternative.

What this all really comes down to is a larger argument about bodily autonomy.

Many of the same people who argue that government should stay out of vaccine decisions are perfectly comfortable with government involvement in reproductive healthcare decisions.

The hypocrisy is difficult to ignore.

I’ve heard anti-vaccine activists proudly proclaim, “My body, my choice.”

Interesting phrase.

Those same voices are often among the loudest supporters of abortion restrictions so severe that they criminalize care even in tragic and medically complex circumstances.

I’ve watched misinformation spread about abortion just as aggressively as misinformation spreads about vaccines.

As a healthcare provider, my position was always straightforward.

My responsibility was to provide accurate information, answer questions honestly, discuss risks and benefits, and support patients in making informed decisions.

I was not there to make personal decisions for them.

I have the equipment necessary to help create a pregnancy, but I am not the one carrying that pregnancy.

Ultimately, those decisions belong to the patient.

The same principle applies across healthcare.

Patients deserve accurate information.

Patients deserve informed consent.

Patients deserve autonomy.

What they don’t deserve is politicians substituting ideology for science.

Years ago it was said that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—or the one.

Public health exists because infectious diseases don’t care about politics, ideology, social media posts, or campaign slogans.

We need effective disease control.

We don’t need the return of preventable childhood diseases.

At the same time, medical decisions should remain where they belong: between patients and healthcare professionals.

If you’re against abortion, don’t have one.

If you’re against vaccines, don’t get one.

But don’t use the government to take choices away from everyone else.

My dog and my mom are happily vaccinated, just the way they should be.