What’s the Latest on Childhood Vaccines?

For decades, U.S. parents and caregivers have been able to rely on governmental guidance about when, how, and why to vaccinate children to protect them from dangerous and potentially deadly childhood diseases, such as measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, whooping cough, flu, and chickenpox.

But this June, Robert F. Kennedy, the Trump-appointed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, an avowed anti-vaccine proponent, fired all 17 of the experts on the ACIP board, replacing them with eight handpicked new members, several of whom are vaccine critics, including three opponents of the mRNA vaccines that saved hundreds of thousands of lives during the Covid pandemic.