The physicians of the Massachusetts Medical Society are deeply concerned about the CDC’s reduction of recommended childhood vaccines.
Pulling back from broadly recommending safe and effective vaccines that for decades have prevented illness, hospitalization, and death from diseases like meningitis, hepatitis A and B, and influenza will cause dangerous confusion, undermine trust in science
and medicine, and unnecessarily endanger the lives children.
These changes come at a time when vaccine-preventable diseases are resurging, evidenced by the United States seeing the highest number of measles cases in decades.
Vaccines remain the gold standard for preventing outbreaks of serious and contagious infectious diseases. Underestimating or dismissing the risk of an outbreak fuels public health crises and presents avoidable danger to compromised and healthy patients
alike.
We urge patients and families to review their immunization histories and consult with their child’s physician or health care provider when making vaccination decisions. Massachusetts physicians stand ready to address questions and assure patients and
the public that decades of scientific, evidence-based research affirms that immunization is safe and effective.
The science and evidence have not changed, nor will the Medical Society’s ardent support of the ongoing efforts of the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Department of Public Health to ensure availability of lifesaving childhood vaccines and to correct
dangerous health care-related misinformation.
-Olivia Liao, MD, President, Massachusetts Medical Society
