Health
Private Footage Reveals Leading Medical Org’s Efforts To ‘Normalize’ Gender Ideology
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By MEGAN BROCK AND KATE ANDERSON
I have developed a part of my brain that’s very fluid around with some of my folks asking them each week, what name are you going by? What pronouns are we using today? So it keeps us flexible to be doing this work.
This is the seventh article in the “WPATH Tapes” series on the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the gender medical industry. Read the overview of our investigation here.
Members of the world’s most prominent transgender medical organization encouraged fellow doctors to push transgender ideology beyond the healthcare field into schools and their communities, according to internal recordings obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In September 2022, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Global Education Institute (GEI) hosted an event that included a series of education sessions for certification in transgender medicine. The event coincided with the release of WPATH’s updated medical guidance, called the Standards of Care Version 8 (SOC 8), and provided additional insights on its clinical applications.
During the sessions WPATH members were encouraged to “normalize” preferred pronoun use as a way to “create societal change” and behave in a way that “affirms” their patients’ gender identity, such as by asking female patients if they have a penis.
Psychologist Ren Massey, the co-chair of WPATH GEI, said clinicians should be ready to act as advocates for “gender diversity” in school settings. Massey earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of South Florida and is not a physician.
“We want to have the skills to negotiate multiple roles,” Massey said. “Because I have both had to be the therapist and then go talk to the school and be an advocate, or do a talk to the whole community of a school. So, I’m in multiple hats that we get to navigate, if we are advocating and helping and supporting our trans and gender diverse folks we are working with.”
Massey did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did Massey’s psychology practice.
Transgender ideology includes the belief that a person’s sex can be different from their “gender identity,” which SOC 8 defines as “a person’s deeply felt, internal, intrinsic sense of their own gender.” It’s a rejection of long-established scientific understanding of biology that there are only two sexes based on the fact there are only two types of reproductive cells — sperm and ova.
The term “gender identity” was popularized in the 1960s by controversial sexologist John Money, who’s most high-profile experiment involved advising parents of a boy whose penis was damaged in a botched circumcision to cut the rest of it off and raise him as a girl. At age 15, the boy — who was raised as “Brenda” — discovered the truth and rejected further hormone treatments. He eventually committed suicide at age 38.
The very concept of “gender identity” creates the possibility of changing one’s sex — a biological impossibility — through medical interventions, therefore creating a demand for medical sex reassignment interventions.
SOC 8 recommends that gender dysphoric minors be given the opportunity to “change” their sex through medical interventions. The guidance has been used to inform government regulations, insurance policies, and recommendations by numerous medical organizations, increasing minors access to sex reassignment procedures.
‘We Will Facilitate Changes’
The call for clinicians to be involved in local schools was echoed by WPATH-affiliated psychologist Dr. Wallace Wong in a presentation titled “Foundations in Gender Affirming Mental Health Care in Childhood and Adolescence.” Wong explained how therapists can play a pivotal role in facilitating change by helping schools embrace transgenderism and explained that schools need to embrace the use of preferred pronouns.
“A lot of time we will facilitate changes. It’s not unusual that you will go to the school with the parents together and educate the school what to do,” said Wong. “A lot of the times, some school they say, ‘we don’t know what to do.’ You say, ‘that doesn’t fly, I will teach you how to do,’” Wong said.
Wong did not respond to requests for comment, and the Diversity and Emotional Wellness Centre, where Wong works, provided additional contact information but did not provide comment.
SOC 8 recommends that “health care professionals work with families, schools, and other relevant settings to promote acceptance of gender diverse expressions of behavior and identities of the adolescent.”
“Using different pronouns for children is a step towards their social transition. It is now well established that social transition leads to the medicalization of their care,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of Do No Harm, a watchdog organization focused on keeping identity politics out of healthcare and medical schools, told the DCNF.
“It is inappropriate for anyone to advocate gender transition in gender dysphoric children unless they have had extensive psychological counseling and are part of some formal research protocol,” Goldfarb said. “This is the new policy in the United Kingdom and in multiple European countries.”
Without naming a specific doctor, Goldfarb said that “for a physician to speak to untrained personnel given the psychological difficulties that these children often experience along with their gender dysphoria, is bordering on malpractice.”
‘The Face Of The Enemy’
As European nations such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the U.K. have restricted or halted the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers in minors, WPATH has rallied against similar bans in the United States.
The WPATH GEI educational event dedicated an entire session to transgender legal and policy issues. Paula Neira, a biological man who identifies as a woman and is program director of LGBTQ Equity & Education at Johns Hopkins Medicine, gave a presentation titled “Legal Issues & Policy.” During the talk, Neira criticized legislative efforts aimed at stopping child sex changes and protecting women’s sports.
“Numerous states have either engaged in having litigation and legislation proposed or the government has taken actions that are targeting the LGBTQ+ community broadly, and then at least half of these bills are specifically targeting transgender people, particularly transgender youth. The way that these bills are being played out is, one is attempts to ban gender affirming care,” Neira said.
“In Alabama they’re trying to criminalize, by making it a felony, to provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The bill is called the “Alabama Child Compassion and Protection Act” so the height of cynicism and hypocrisy,” Neira said.
Neira ended the session by calling on WPATH members to band together and stand firm against “attacks” on the transgender community.
“Being defiant in the face of the enemy is not something that’s unfamiliar to me,” Neria said. “It’s going to take a lot of resolve. It’s going take a lot of resilience. It’s going take a lot of mutual support, to stand firm under these attacks. And that’s what we have to do. And we have to do it with a clear strategic eye. And that means banding together. It means being strategic in how we challenge policy, how we advocate and make persuasive arguments.”
“And together we’re gonna get back to making progress no matter how bleak it looks now, as long as we never give in. And we never surrender,” Neira told the audience, prompting applause.
Neira did not respond to requests for comment. Johns Hopkins Medicine, where Neira works, responded but did not provide comment.
‘Helps All Humans’
Throughout the 30 hours of WPATH GEI recordings reviewed by the DCNF, speakers cast a vision of moving gender ideology beyond sex change procedures and promoting it in other domains such as schools, communities and public policy.
Dr. Scott Leibowitz, a WPATH board member and SOC 8 co-author, said it “helps all humans” to promote the acceptance of transgender ideology in a diversity of settings.
“We recommend health care professionals who work with families. They should work with families, schools, and other relevant settings to promote acceptance of gender diverse expressions of behavior and identities of the adolescent,” Leibowitz said.
“Notice, we don’t say: ‘work with these settings to promote acceptance of transgender people,’” Leibowitz told the audience. “We actually think it’s broader than that because by helping promote acceptance of gender diversity as a whole, we believe that helps all humans, including trans people. It doesn’t reinforce the notion of boxes, which is what we’re trying to move away from.”
Leibowitz declined an interview request through a Nationwide Children’s Hospitals spokesperson.
WPATH’s commitment to social change is captured in its own guidelines.
“WPATH recognizes that health is not only dependent upon high-quality clinical care but also relies on social and political climates that ensure social tolerance, equality, and the full rights of citizenship,” the guidelines read. “Health is promoted through public policies and legal reforms that advance tolerance and equity for gender diversity and that eliminate prejudice, discrimination, and stigma. WPATH is committed to advocacy for these policy and legal changes.”
‘Creating Change By Using Different Language’
WPATH members were also encouraged to use preferred pronouns in healthcare practices, with Massey describing the use of preferred pronouns as a way to create social change.
“I would encourage you in your practices to have universal approaches to correct pronouns. So, training your staff so they’re aware and have good interaction skills. Maybe even have role plays with them,” Massey said.
“We are creating change by using different language,” said Massey.
Massey, who maintains an active psychology practice, said it’s “good clinical practice” to let clients dictate terminology used to describe their sex and gender.
“I’ve had folks that within the same day or within the same week may shift from feeling masculine, feminine, both, neither,” Massey said.
“And so that’s a thing like I have developed a part of my brain that’s very fluid around with some of my folks asking them each week, what name are you going by? What pronouns are we using today? So it keeps us flexible to be doing this work. There is so much evolution and so much exciting work developing.”
SOC 8 recommends that healthcare professionals use the “language or terminology” preferred by the patient.
‘Normalize It’
Dr. Jennifer Slovis, the medical director of the Oakland Kaiser Permanente Gender Clinic, promoted the use of an electronic medical database that collects sexual orientation and gender identity information for all patients. On the form, healthcare providers were expected to indicate a patient’s preferred pronouns and gender identity, as well as take an “organ inventory” for the patient.
The organ inventory asks both men and women to indicate their reproductive organs on a list that includes the cervix, breasts, uterus, vagina, testes, prostate and penis. Clinicians were also asked to indicate which organs were present at birth, had been surgically constructed, or developed by hormones.
Slovis explained that to “normalize” the organ inventory, this data needs to be collected for all patients, including “cisgender” patients.
“Cisgender people too, we should be doing this for everybody. That’s the only way we’re going to normalize it, if we do it for everybody,” said Slovis.
Slovis did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did Kaiser Permanente, where Slovis works.
In a presentation titled “Foundations in Primary Care,” Dr. Erika Sullivan said organ inventories needed to be constantly taken because patients’ organs “change.”
“One of the things I always like to illustrate with this is that you don’t just ask this question once, right? Because this changes. And so sexual practices change, pronouns change, organs change,” said Sullivan.
“You kind of have to constantly take that inventory to find out like, what’s what, what’s where, what are we doing?” Sullivan said.
WPATH’s SOC 8 supports the use of organ inventories.
“In electronic health records, organ/anatomical inventories can be standardly used to inform appropriate clinical care, rather than relying solely on assigned sex at birth and/ or gender identity designations,” the guidelines read.
Sullivan also explained the importance of using preferred pronouns and not assuming a patient’s pronouns based on outward appearance.
“I should be asking this of everybody and introducing myself this way, ‘Hi, I’m Erica, I use she/her pronouns,’” Sullivan said. “Because I think if we are going by sort of presentation, we are taking so much bias and so much judgment into that space. It’s really important to just wipe that away. So asking everyone’s pronouns is important because really, ultimately, you have to question your assumptions.”
Sullivan did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did the University of Utah, where Sullivan works.
Goldfarb said doctors should focus on patient care, not promoting gender ideology.
“It is not the job of physicians to create a culture of gender ideology. The job of physicians is to care for ill people,” Goldfarb said. “The proper care for children with gender dysphoria is intensive psychological treatment. The idea that all this should be normalized represents pure ideology and is not based on hard science or valid clinical research.”
WPATH did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
CDC Cuts Total Doses in Alignment with the rest of most of Western Civilization. I suspect we found evidence within CDC supporting.
The CDC’s January 2026 childhood vaccine schedule realignment is not a retreat from science—it is its restoration. By aligning the U.S. with international norms, reclassifying low-benefit vaccines, and preserving universal access, the policy reasserts informed consent, parsimony, and scientific integrity as central to public health. This editorial evaluates the evidence, clarifies common misinterpretations, and outlines the stakes of institutional credibility in the era of collapsing trust.
Ending the Era of Maximalism
In January 2026, the CDC issued a long-overdue correction to the American childhood vaccine schedule. Despite headlines framing this move as a rollback or retreat, not a single vaccine was removed from access or coverage. The change was not reductive—it was clarifying. It replaced one-size-fits-all mandates with a proportional, transparent structure based on international norms, current evidence, and a sobering admission of what science does not yet know. This was not a political maneuver. It was a governance correction, rooted in the principles of informed consent and institutional legitimacy.
The real story is not what was removed, but what was realigned—and why. The revised architecture reflects a basic truth: trust cannot be coerced. It must be earned. That is the starting point of science. And the endpoint of policy.
The CDC Recognizes Its Schedule as a Coercive Instrument
For decades, the CDC’s “routine recommendation” has operated less as guidance and more as soft mandate. Once a vaccine was recommended for all children, it cascaded through state school-entry requirements, insurance policies, quality metric scoring, and pediatrician compliance programs. Families who opted out often faced dismissal from care. Physicians faced insurer incentives tied to vaccination quotas. In this ecosystem, choice was technically permitted—but penalized.
The CDC’s own assessment acknowledges this explicitly: “Instead of implementing vaccination mandates, most peer nations maintain high childhood vaccination rates through public trust and education” (CDC, 2026, p.3). The updated policy aims to dismantle this coercive scaffolding—not by withdrawing vaccines, but by restoring clarity to what is essential, what is conditional, and what is contextual.
Comparative Overreach: America as an Outlier
The United States was not just a global leader in pediatric vaccination. It was a statistical outlier. According to the CDC’s comparative review (2026, Table 2), the U.S. schedule in 2024 recommended vaccines against 17 diseases, requiring 84 to 88 total doses delivered across 57 to 71 injections. By contrast:
- Denmark covers 10 diseases with 30 doses and only 11 injections.
- UK uses fewer doses but retains near-universal MMR uptake.
- Canada varies by province but aligns closely with European practice.
Importantly, many peer nations refrain from recommending routine use of hepatitis A, influenza, meningococcal B, and rotavirus for all children. These are not poor or negligent countries. They are scientifically robust, and they achieve high uptake by preserving credibility, not enforcing compliance.
The report introduces the ethical principle of clinical equipoise—the acknowledgment of uncertainty in the face of professional disagreement. When peer nations with equivalent disease burdens and health infrastructures diverge in recommendations, it signals unresolved evidence gaps, not ignorance.
Trust Collapse and Its Operational Consequences
Trust in U.S. health authorities fell precipitously between 2020 and 2024—from 71.5% to 40.1% (CDC, p.3). This collapse had measurable consequences. Uptake of the MMR vaccine, one of the most effective vaccines in the consensus schedule, dropped from 95.2% to 92.7% nationally. Sixteen states fell below the 90% threshold, increasing the risk of outbreaks.
Indeed, in 2025, the U.S. experienced 49 measles outbreaks—88% of the 2,065 reported cases were outbreak-associated (CDC, 2026). This wasn’t due to vaccine rejection. It was due to trust rejection. The report directly links trust erosion to coercive COVID-era policies, including mask mandates, school closures, disregard for natural immunity, and overstated claims about sterilizing immunity. The CDC writes, “The distrust of public health agencies during the pandemic has spilled over to other recommendations, including those with respect to vaccines” (p.3).
This trust decay wasn’t isolated. Countries like Denmark explicitly warned against adding low-benefit vaccines to their schedules, citing risks of degrading public confidence. Their prediction came true here. The U.S. attempted to do more—and got less.
Schedule-Level Science: Gaps Finally Acknowledged
The most important admission in the report may be this: “The effects of the overall schedule have never been fully evaluated” (CDC, p.12). That sentence should haunt anyone who defends the status quo. Despite decades of schedule expansion, there has been no comprehensive evaluation of the long-term safety, synergy, or cumulative immunologic impact of the entire pediatric vaccine regimen.
While individual vaccines like MMR, Hib, and IPV have robust pre-licensure data, many others were approved without large-scale placebo-controlled trials. Post-marketing systems such as VAERS, VSD, and BEST have identified acute risks—e.g., intussusception with rotavirus, febrile seizures with MMRV, myocarditis with mRNA vaccines—but are underpowered for delayed or systemic effects.
A 2023 VSD study found a dose-dependent association between cumulative aluminum exposure from vaccines and persistent asthma (HR = 2.0) (Daley et al., Academic Pediatrics, 2023). This is not conclusive proof of harm—but it is definitive proof of the need to study schedule-level interactions.
The CDC now calls for exactly that: randomized timing trials, long-term cohort studies comparing health outcomes across exposure strata, and formal evaluation of interaction effects, adjuvant loads, and timing differentials.
A New Ethical Architecture
The revised schedule distinguishes three recommendation types:
1. Recommended for all children — reserved for vaccines with demonstrated benefit across the population and international consensus.
2. High-risk group recommendations — for children with defined medical or exposure risks.
3. Shared clinical decision-making — for vaccines where the population-level benefit is uncertain, or where individual risk–benefit may vary.
This framework already exists in CDC language, but it had been underutilized and obscured by the dominance of routine recommendations. The new policy makes it operational.
Crucially, no vaccines are removed from coverage. The document reiterates: “All immunizations recommended by the CDC at the end of 2025—and covered by insurance at that time—should remain covered without cost sharing” (CDC, p.3). Denmark, the UK, and Switzerland use similar stratified systems. The U.S. has now caught up—not by doing less, but by doing what works.
HPV One-Dose: An Evidence-Based Pivot
The decision to shift from two doses of HPV vaccine to one is a model for evidence-responsive policy. The CDC cites multiple studies demonstrating non-inferiority of a single dose:
– Kreimer et al., NEJM 2025
– Watson-Jones et al., Lancet Global Health 2025
– Basu et al., Lancet Oncology 2021
Peer nations including the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Canada had already adopted this strategy. One dose achieves near-identical protection against vaccine-targeted HPVs with lower burden and fewer adverse events. The CDC’s alignment here is not a retreat—it’s a data-driven upgrade.
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Refined “Recommended for All” List
The CDC now limits routine universal recommendations to vaccines with:
– Strong international consensus
– High demonstrated public health value
– Well-characterized safety and efficacy profiles.
These are:
– Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR)
– Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP/Tdap)
– Polio (IPV) – Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib)
– Pneumococcal conjugate (PCV)
– Human papillomavirus (HPV), now reduced to a single-dose schedule
– Varicella (chickenpox), retained due to U.S.-specific epidemiology
Many parents have questions about the efficacy of the measles and mumps portions of the MMR given that asymptomatic transmission of measles is an established but little-discussed fact, and before COVID-19, mumps outbreaks in fully vaccinated schools in the US was well-documented.
What changed: HPV was reduced from 2–3 doses to 1. Several vaccines previously listed as universal are now reclassified. The new universal list more closely mirrors countries like Denmark, the UK, and Ireland.
Reclassification of Non-Consensus Vaccines
Vaccines such as:
– Hepatitis A
– Hepatitis B (birth dose only if mother is HBsAg-negative)
– Rotavirus
– Influenza
– COVID-19
– Meningococcal B and ACWY
– RSV monoclonal antibody (not a vaccine)
have all been moved to either:
– High-risk group recommendations (e.g., Hep A for travelers, Hep B for infants of positive/unknown mothers)
– or Shared clinical decision-making pathways
This model mirrors European governance practices, where vaccines with uncertain population-wide benefit are discussed individually between provider and parent/guardian.
What changed: These vaccines are no longer recommended for universal administration but remain fully covered and available to all families through Medicaid, CHIP, VFC, and private insurance.
Policy Emphasis on Schedule-Level Science
For the first time, the CDC acknowledges:
– The full schedule has never been rigorously studied for cumulative, synergistic, or long-term effects
– Many vaccines were approved without randomized placebo-controlled trials in children
– Post-licensure surveillance (e.g., VAERS, VSD) is underpowered to detect long-latency effects or rare but serious chronic sequelae
The CDC now explicitly calls for:
– Randomized trials using timing-based designs
– Long-term cohort studies comparing vaccinated vs unvaccinated children
– Safety studies on combined vaccine administration, adjuvants, and spacing.
This is a seachange: Scientific uncertainty is now acknowledged and embedded into the policy framework, triggering a new research mandate.
Elimination of Implicit Coercion via Schedule
While the policy does not change state-level school mandates, it removes the federal “routine” label from lower-priority vaccines, reducing pressure on providers to dismiss non-compliant families or tie insurer bonuses to rigid adherence.
In its place: a structured, choice-respecting pathway that centers parental informed consent.
What changed: The policy restores consent as a governing principle, removes schedule inflation, and distinguishes between access and recommendation.
This is a systemic reform, not a minor tweak. The policy shift restores proportionality, science-based prioritization, and institutional humility—while safeguarding coverage and access. It is a reassertion of legitimacy in the aftermath of a trust crisis.
What the Policy Rejects
This policy formally rejects several assumptions that had ossified into doctrine:
– That more vaccines necessarily equal better health.
– That mandates are required to ensure compliance.
– That high-volume schedules are scientifically complete.
– That dissent is misinformation.
– That informed consent is a formality, not a right.
The CDC explicitly names coercion as a failed tool and calls for its replacement with personalized, risk-aligned care.
What the Policy Preserves and Strengthens
This is not a deregulation agenda. It is a realignment. The policy preserves:
– Universal access to all covered vaccines.
– Full coverage under Medicaid, CHIP, and VFC.
– Trust-based compliance mechanisms.
– Ethical clarity: recommendations reflect both evidence and respect for autonomy.
– Institutional epistemic humility: public health must now justify, not presume.
The result? Less friction, more uptake—of the right vaccines, in the right populations, for the right reasons.
Anticipating and Answering the Critics
No, the liability protections were not removed. This policy does not increase vaccine risk—it increases institutional honesty.
No, measles will not surge because of this schedule. MMR remains fully recommended. The drop in uptake happened under maximalist policy.
No, international comparison is not cherry-picking. It is the standard for identifying clinical equipoise. Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland offer leaner schedules, fewer mandates, and stronger vaccine trust.
Those who call this “anti-science” misunderstand science. This is science doing what it must: confronting uncertainty, not denying it.
The Schedule Is the Signal
The CDC’s January 2026 reform is not the dismantling of public health. It is its restoration. Trust cannot be coerced. Compliance must be earned. And scientific legitimacy must be updated to reflect both what we know—and what we still don’t.
The vaccine schedule is not just a list. It is a social contract. And for the first time in decades, it has been revised to reflect mutual respect, rather than managerial force.
The signal has changed. And for the health of children and the credibility of science, that is exactly what was needed.
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CDC SHRINKS ROUTINE CHILDHOOD VACCINE SCHEDULE BY ~55 DOSES
Today, the CDC formally adopted a revised childhood and adolescent immunization schedule, following a Presidential Memorandum directing alignment with international best practices.
This marks the largest rollback of routine childhood vaccination in U.S. history.
After reviewing peer-country schedules and the scientific evidence underlying them, federal health leadership acknowledged that we are hyper-vaccinating our children.
The result is a dramatically smaller routine childhood vaccine schedule, cutting approximately 55 routine doses.
This is a major victory — even as serious safety concerns remain for the vaccines that continue to be recommended.
 |
The Key Change: ~55 Routine Doses Eliminated
Previous U.S. routine schedule (2024)
- 84–88 routine vaccine doses
- Targeting 17 diseases
- (18 if RSV monoclonal antibody is included)
New CDC routine schedule (2026)
- ~30 routine doses
- Targeting 10–11 diseases
- Based on international consensus
Net change: approximately 54–58 routine doses removed, commonly summarized as ~55 routine doses.
Importantly, this reduction applies only to vaccines previously labeled “routine for all children.” No vaccines were banned or removed from availability.
What Was Removed from the Routine Schedule
The following vaccines are no longer recommended for all children by default:
- COVID-19
- Influenza
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B (including removal of the universal birth dose if the mother is HBsAg-negative)
- Rotavirus
- Meningococcal ACWY
- Meningococcal B
These vaccines account for nearly the entire ~55-dose reduction.
What Remains Routine
The CDC now limits routine childhood vaccination to the following vaccines:
- Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR)
- Diphtheria
- Tetanus
- Pertussis
- Polio
- Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib)
- Pneumococcal disease
- Varicella (chickenpox)
- Human Papillomavirus (HPV), reduced from two doses to one
This is still not “safe by default”
These vaccines remain:
- Insufficiently studied for long-term outcomes
- Untested in placebo-controlled trials
- Never evaluated as a cumulative schedule
- Inducers of over 20 chronic diseases
Adverse events such as febrile seizures, severe neurological injury including autism, ADHD, tics, autoimmune disease, asthma, allergies, skin and gut disorders, ear infections, and a long list of other chronic diseases have been documented across multiple vaccines on this list:
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Reducing the schedule does not equal proving safety. It simply reduces exposure. Nonetheless, that reduction alone is quite meaningful.
Where Those Vaccines Went
Non-consensus vaccines were reclassified, not banned:
Shared Clinical Decision-Making
- COVID-19
- Influenza
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B
- Rotavirus
- Meningococcal ACWY
- Meningococcal B
High-Risk Groups Only
- RSV monoclonal antibody
- Hepatitis A (travel, outbreaks, liver disease)
- Hepatitis B (HBsAg-positive or unknown maternal status)
- Dengue
- Meningococcal vaccines for defined risk groups
All remain available and fully covered by insurance. However, given entrenched institutional habits and ideological adherence to maximal vaccination, many clinicians are likely to continue promoting shared clinical decision-making vaccines as de facto routine unless families are informed and assertive.
Why This Is Still a Massive Win
For decades, the childhood vaccine schedule expanded without:
- Schedule-level safety trials
- Long-term outcome data
- Meaningful public debate
- Informed consent
This decision reverses that trajectory. It:
- Shrinks routine exposure dramatically
- Restores parental agency
- Forces future decisions to confront risk-benefit reality
Most importantly, it breaks the false premise that “more vaccines is always better.”
Conclusion
The CDC has eliminated every non-consensus vaccine from the routine childhood schedule, cutting routine exposure by approximately 55 doses—an implicit admission that the safety of the expanded schedule was never adequately established.
This decision does not end the problem. The vaccines that remain routinely recommended are still largely untested in long-term, placebo-controlled trials, are administered during critical periods of neurodevelopment, and continue to pose serious safety concerns. As a result, a substantial number of autism cases and other chronic conditions will continue to occur.
However, by sharply reducing cumulative exposure during early childhood, this change marks the first credible step toward reversing the trajectory. The burden of neurodevelopmental injury should begin to decline—not disappear, but diminish.
Even with its limitations, this action represents the most consequential course correction in U.S. pediatric vaccination policy in modern history. It breaks the assumption that an ever-expanding schedule is inherently safe, restores proportionality, and opens the door to long-overdue accountability, transparency, and real safety science.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
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