Pediatricians push back against Trump's plan to revamp kids’ vaccines

Parents rushing to get kids ready for classes faced another issue to consider last week when President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to change childhood vaccination recommendations.

What does that mean for Illinois families?

“In the state of Illinois, nothing is changing, we are still doing the exact same thing,” said pediatrician Dr. Anita Chandra-Puri, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Except — “we have to now have more conversations with families to help them dispel the myths and weed through the misinformation that’s out there.”

The Illinois Department of Public Health announced Tuesday the state will continue to endorse the Itasca-based AAP’s immunization schedule.

Those guidelines are “tailored to the health of children living in the United States and are based on decades of research and systematic tracking of real-world experiences,” AAP President Dr. Andrew Racine said in a statement.

“Delaying or skipping shots is risky, especially as measles continues to spread and children go back to school.”

At a news conference Aug. 10, Trump said the executive order offered “gold-standard childhood vaccine recommendations.”

He called for the MMR shot, which prevents measles, mumps and rubella, to be split up. “We want it in three separate vaccinations, given at separate times.”

The policy also seeks to shift certain vaccinations, such as hepatitis A, from being recommended for all kids to being recommended only for children with high-risk conditions or based on decisions between doctors and parents.

Trump claimed children were healthier decades ago when fewer vaccinations were offered and tied inoculations to autism, a theory which scientific studies have refuted.

“It’s a strange, nonscientific, nonevidence-based proclamation,” Chandra-Puri said.

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital’s Dr. Ravi Jhaveri added “the evidence shows that the vaccines that we use have very, very rare adverse events or side effects and incredible benefits.”

Lurie doctors regularly treat patients for vaccine-preventable illnesses, most of whom were not inoculated, he said.

For many parents, it’s a cause of remorse and regret, “because they see then firsthand the devastating effects that these infections can have,” said Jhaveri, head of Lurie’s pediatric infectious diseases division.

Breaking down MMR

Deconstructing the MMR shot is problematic, Chandra-Puri said.

“The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine has been a combination product for several decades now,” she said. “We don’t even have access to separate measles, separate mumps, and separate rubella vaccinations in the United States.”

Splitting the vaccine into individual components could take years because drug companies will need to make new products and then conduct tests to show they work and are safe, experts said.

It would also mean extra injections and more visits to the doctor for infants and young children, Jhaveri explained.

“I don’t hear parents saying to me that this is something that they want,” he said. “It’s important to remember that more than 90% of parents get their kids all the vaccines that are recommended.”

The MMR vaccine was introduced in the U.S. in 1971.

When mumps was more prevalent, it could cause severe brain infections and serious eye complications, which could lead to blindness, in some children, as well as damage reproductive organs causing sterility, Jhaveri recounted.

Rubella, also known as German measles, could cause birth defects in children born to women who contracted the disease.

“We don’t see any of these things any more now, since we’ve been using vaccines,” he said.

Downgrading certain vaccines from the “recommended for all children” classification ignores public health history, Jhaveri contends.

He cited the hepatitis A vaccine, introduced in 1995, as an example. Previously, while children “did not often get really sick, kids, especially young kids who were not toilet-trained, become vectors for transmission.”

“We used to have kids that got so sick they would need liver transplants or die,” Jhaveri said. “That never happens anymore.”

Connecting with your doctor

It’s normal for parents to worry, Chandra-Puri noted, and it’s important to share concerns about vaccinations with pediatricians.

“As a parent, you should have the ability to have conversations with your pediatrician about what your child is getting, what the side effect profile is, and what the benefits are.”

Jhaveri objects to what he called mistaken assumptions by the Trump administration that “pediatricians aren’t already communicating and engaging in shared decision-making with parents.”

He advises parents seeking information to “think about the fact that when their kids are sick, they call their pediatrician at 2 a.m. And, that person is there for them all the time. Not some TikTok influencer, not some government agency. So they really should be valuing that person’s advice when they’re thinking about vaccines.”

mpyke@dailyherald.com