Vaccine Policy Should Be Based on Science, Not Partisanship

By Pradheep J. Shanker

Thursday, January 08, 2026

 

On Monday, the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a new vaccine schedule completely altering the health policy of the United States.

 

The United States’ childhood vaccine schedule took decades to build, using millions of dollars of research as well as thousands of hours of rigorous study that helped prove the safety and efficacy of these therapies. Over the years, the government tested these vaccines through numerous disease outbreaks, scientific breakthroughs, and worldwide experience of how children suffer from preventable illnesses.

 

But this week, all of this work was dismissed with a pen stroke by someone who neither provided nor understands any of the science and data supporting the use of these vaccines.

 

To be fair, there is no reason not to reevaluate the vaccine schedule. Routine and regular analysis of whether the evidence continues to support our health policies is incredibly important. It is always possible that science is mistaken, or that new technologies and therapies have made certain interventions unnecessary. Extensive research and study could absolutely be used to prove how effective or dangerous these vaccines are.

 

The only problem is that none of that applies in this case.

 

The HHS, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., did not do any new analysis at all. An evidence-based review with no new evidence is a contradiction. The assessment, which can be read here, provided no new safety data. No new studies, with or without controls, were provided. Nothing has substantially changed about these vaccines, the trial data, and the decades of post-licensure surveillance. The only change was political and partisan, with the person in charge unilaterally deciding that he doesn’t like what the evidence and data show him.

 

This is the opposite of solid, gold-standard science.

 

First, note that there are no federally mandated vaccines. There never have been. Also, the number of vaccines recommended by the federal government is not 72; this number has repeatedly been cited by President Donald Trump and others, and it is false. Depending on how you count, the number is closer to 32 vaccines for the first 18 years of life; the only way to get to the number 72 is if you add yearly Covid and influenza vaccines, and how many of our children are getting all of those doses yearly? Many parents are opting out of those, as they have every right to do. This personal right to choose is nothing new.

 

Some states have vaccine mandates for schools and childcare facilities, as well as other care facilities. But none of these is federally mandated. Parents have always had the choice to opt out, and nothing Kennedy has done in his tenure has changed that.

 

What has changed is which vaccines are recommended. Many states tend to follow federal recommendations, but the decision is still up to state policymakers. The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t recommend certain vaccines anymore is unlikely to move state policymakers to alter their mandates.

 

Proponents of changing the vaccine schedule often claim that they are simply following the recommendations of peer countries, with Denmark being the most commonly referenced. The problem is that public health comprises holistic policy determinations. RFK Jr. and his department are simply looking at other countries’ vaccine recommendations without taking into consideration all of the other factors involved in treating illness.

 

A perfect example of this is the rotavirus vaccine. Rota is a virus that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration and is especially dangerous in the very young and very old. Before wide use of the vaccine, this virus resulted in around 70,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States among children and 20–60 childhood deaths yearly. Since widespread acceptance of the vaccine in 2006, hospitalizations have been reduced by over 50 percent, and childhood deaths have virtually been eliminated among those who are vaccinated.

 

Denmark has never recommended this vaccine, though. Why? Part of the reason is Denmark’s universal health-care system. Treatment of rota depends greatly on early and aggressive treatment of dehydration in children. Given a universal health system, parents are far more willing to take their children to the doctor or hospital if necessary. Even so, around 1,200 children with rotavirus are hospitalized yearly in Denmark, a country of 6 million people. In a country the size of the United States, that would mean almost 85,000 hospitalizations yearly, and that is with the presumption that they would get the same level of early, aggressive care that they do in Denmark.

 

The widespread adoption of the rotavirus vaccine in the United States, therefore, saves thousands of lives and billions of dollars yearly. It has been so successful that children’s hospitals that once needed huge wards simply to treat childhood diarrhea during rota outbreaks no longer even build such units. We have totally eliminated the need because of the absolute success of vaccine.

 

Denmark, ironically, is an outlier even among Nordic countries. Children are vaccinated against rota in Finland, Norway, and certain regions of Sweden, but not in Denmark. So why did RFK Jr. choose to follow the example of Denmark, a very small country with universal health care, which allows its residents to make health-care decisions that those of larger countries, even many of its neighbors, can’t afford? It was a decision made for partisan purposes that has nothing to do with science.

 

Maybe the most dangerous assertion made by RFK Jr. and some of his supporters is that this schedule change will help decrease autism rates. In his first year in office, RFK Jr. directed the CDC to reexamine the supposed link between vaccinations and autism and pledged to publish the findings. And to no one’s surprise, the government has not yet released any data proving such a link.

 

In short, Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration continue to make policy based on partisan interests, false theories, and nonsensical assertions instead of using scientific standards of rigorous data acquisition and analysis to show if there are statistically significant associations between vaccines and various ailments. But this administration refuses to do any of that. There is no reason the American public should trust leaders who are so unwilling to provide any evidence for their policies.