12/08/2026
Today is a sad day for our children.
Not because vaccine recommendations should never change. They should change whenever better evidence tells us they should.
It is sad because major changes to childhood vaccination are being advanced without compelling new evidence demonstrating that the existing recommendations were wrong.
This executive order moves several vaccines away from routine recommendations, calls for eventually splitting MMR into three separate vaccines, and says childhood vaccines should, “to the maximum extent feasible,” be given at separate medical visits.
That last provision alone could create significant barriers for families.
More appointments mean more time away from work and school, more transportation challenges, more opportunities for missed doses, and more children potentially falling behind.
The order also encourages states to reconsider school vaccine requirements and directs the federal government toward supporting certain legal challenges involving state vaccination laws and exemptions.
These aren’t abstract policy decisions. Behind every vaccine on the childhood schedule is a disease we decided children shouldn’t have to suffer from if we can safely prevent it.
Measles can cause pneumonia, brain inflammation and death.
Pertussis can be devastating for infants.
Influenza hospitalizes and kills children every year.
Meningococcal disease can take the life of a healthy child within hours.
Hepatitis B can become a lifelong infection leading to cirrhosis and liver cancer.
We should continuously study vaccine safety. We should improve vaccines. We should communicate uncertainty honestly, and when evidence shows that a recommendation should change, we should change it, but the sequence matters.
Evidence should change policy. Policy should not decide what the evidence ought to say.
Children cannot choose the political environment into which they are born. They depend on the adults around them to make decisions based on the best evidence we have.
That is why today is a sad day for our children.
