Ping Huang

This is a policy that's been in effect for more than 30 years.

And it's something that came up at the last meeting where some members wanted to push the vaccine back to when kids are older and others said it would be a mistake.

Now, since that meeting, independent researchers have found that delaying the hep B vaccine by even a couple of months

could lead to hundreds of preventable deaths each year.

That's from liver cancers and health problems that are prevented by getting this $15 vaccine.

Also, they're going to be discussing the overall vaccine schedule, which is who gets which vaccines and when, and also what goes into vaccines.

What are their concerns about the vaccine schedule?

So Milhone, the new committee chair, told the Washington Post that they're going to be looking into whether

Vaccines are causing asthma, eczema, and other autoimmune diseases in children.

This is even though large long-term studies have found no evidence for this.

Dr. Sean O'Leary with the American Academy of Pediatrics says that every vaccine on the schedule is vetted.

Now, Kennedy has also enraged the public health community recently by ordering changes to the CDC's website suggesting that vaccines and specifically an ingredient containing aluminum might cause autism.

This is also not supported by scientific consensus, but it's also a topic for this meeting.

And just for folks who might be interested, why is aluminum in vaccines?

Yeah, so it's not the aluminum metal by itself.

These are chemicals that contain aluminum, and they're used to boost the immune system to make the vaccine more effective.

Now, they've been used in vaccines since the 1930s, and they're currently used in more than a dozen of them in very small amounts.

But if these ingredients get banned, as some advocates have pushed for, there are no substitute vaccines without them that are ready to go.

It could take years for replacements to be developed and to be made.

So there is a lot at stake in this meeting.