Monday, December 8, 2025
See suppressed, Oscar-winning documentary, December 13
| ||
|
Trump regime desperate to cancel wind projects
Trump Interior Dept. to consider revoking New England Wind 1 approval
By Anastasia E. Lennon, Rhode Island Current
The federal agency regulating offshore wind development asked a federal judge to allow it to reconsider a key approval — one the same agency granted just last year — for New England Wind 1, a project planned off the Massachusetts coast.
If the federal government’s request is granted, it would be a blow to the project, which plans to invest in New Bedford and use the city for long-term project operations. If the approval stands, the project could move toward construction once it secures a power purchase agreement with the commonwealth.
This is at least the third time the administration has sought a remand of an offshore wind project approval, the others being for SouthCoast Wind and Maryland’s US Wind. The permits give major infrastructure projects the certainty to secure financing and move forward with construction.
The filing comes more than two months after the federal government signaled it would take such action against this project. The remand request was expected sooner, but the weekslong government shutdown pushed the deadline.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed the motion as part of a lawsuit brought in May by offshore wind opposition group ACK for Whales and other parties, including the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, against BOEM and the Interior Department’s approval of New England Wind 1.
This latest move illustrates how Donald Trump’s administration is using lawsuits brought by municipalities and activist groups as a tool to crack down on the industry. Of the more than 20 actions and orders issued since January, one directed federal attorneys to review pending litigation against projects and consider a remand of permits that the litigation contests.
Vaccine committee votes to scrap universal hepatitis B shots for newborns despite outcry from children’s health experts
Against medical advice and with no scientific evidence, Bobby Jr.'s hand-picked committee set course for increased Hepatitis B infections
The committee advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy voted on Dec. 5, 2025, to stop recommending that all newborns be routinely vaccinated against the hepatitis B virus – undoing a 34-year prevention strategy that has nearly eliminated early childhood hepatitis B infections in the United States. 
Even in Texas, vaccination is recommended
Before the U.S. began vaccinating all infants at birth with the hepatitis B vaccine in 1991, around 18,000 children every year contracted the virus before their 10th birthday – about half of them at birth. About 90% of that subset developed a chronic infection.
In the U.S., 1 in 4 children chronically infected with hepatitis B will die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer.
Today, fewer than 1,000 American children or adolescents contract the virus every year – a 95% drop. Fewer than 20 babies each year are reported infected at birth.
I am a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist who studies vaccine delivery and policy. Vaccinating babies for hepatitis B at birth remains one of the clearest, most evidence-based ways to keep American children free of this lifelong, deadly infection.
What spurred the change?
In September 2025, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an independent panel of experts that advises the CDC, debated changing the recommendation for a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, but ultimately delayed the vote.
This committee regularly reviews vaccine guidance. However, since Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disbanded the entire committee and handpicked new members, its activity has drastically departed from business as usual. The committee has long-standing procedures for evaluating evidence on the risks and benefits of vaccines, but these procedures were not followed in the September meeting and were not followed for this most recent decision.
The committee’s new recommendation keeps the hepatitis B vaccine at birth for infants whose mothers test positive for the virus. But the committee now advises that infants whose mothers test negative should consult with their health care provider. Parents and health care providers are instructed to weigh vaccine benefits, vaccine risks and infection risks using “individual-based decision-making” or “shared clinical decision-making.”
Trump issues new official National Security Strategy that is Russia-friendly and anti-Europe
Russia applauds new strategy saying it is in line with Kremlin goals
 |
| BBC headline |
Some of the most inflammatory rhetoric in the document is
aimed at US-allied European countries that supposedly face “the real and more
stark prospect of civilizational erasure” within the next 20 years.
The document goes on to claim that “should present trends
continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” while
emphasizing that US policy is to help “Europe to remain European, to regain its
civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory
suffocation.”
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Rhode Island municipalities “Doing more with less” is a slogan, not a plan
No municipality can realistically make that happen every single year, for all time.
Tom Sgouros in
In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a movement in the plains and mountain states out west to establish a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). The idea was that property taxes should go up no faster than inflation plus population growth. Colorado passed a version of TABOR through a state referendum in 1992.
After a decade of experience -- watching the devastation
these tax limits caused to public schools, libraries, police forces, and pretty
much all other local services -- the bill was partially repealed in 2005, again
by referendum. After Colorado, despite billionaire-funded campaigns in around a
dozen states. No other state has passed TABOR.
Except in Rhode Island, where, in 2006, under the leadership of Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed and Governor Donald Carcieri, the state enacted a tax cap that was actually more restrictive than TABOR.
The new law lowered the limit on increases and changed it to apply
to the amount collected, rather than the tax rate. The number is written into
law, so a city or town can increase its tax revenue by no more than 4% in years
with zero inflation and in years with 4% inflation. And if the town grows by
5%, too bad, the limit is still 4%. If new construction increases the property
tax base, it’s too bad; the limit is still 4%, and any increase in tax revenue
above that must go toward lowering the tax rate rather than improving services.
This, of course, is crazy and a recipe for long-term municipal fiscal disaster, as cities and towns accumulate responsibilities and grow their populations while their overall budgets are strictly limited.
Cut your heating bills this winter
Heating Assistance and 80-100% Off Weatherizing Your Home
By State Senator Victoria Gu
1) the free energy audit identifies places in your home that
would benefit from air sealing, insulation, and more.
2) the program pays for 80-100% of the cost of doing the
weatherization work.
Every Rhode Island homeowner (and tenant, with landlord
permission) can request their audit and benefit from these energy savings.
Schedule your audit at https://www.riseengineering.com/residential/get-started or
through RIEnergy’s website
Know someone in need of emergency assistance to pay for
heating oil/fuel? A couple places to contact are:
Westerly: Jonnycake Center of Westerly
Charlestown: The Charlestown Senior Center
South County towns: Tri-County CAP for Low-Income Home Energy
Assistance Program (LIHEAP) applications, Heat Pumps and Weatherization, and
Emergency Boiler Repair
Pentagon report says Hegseth created a risk to national security with cellphone messages
Signalgate report unsurprisingly condemns classified real-time military information in unsecure communications
By Jennifer Shutt, Rhode Island Current
The Defense Department Inspector General’s 84-page report concluded Hegseth sent information about the “strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes.”
“Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report states. “Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”
From The Onion
Trump wants your personal data or else!
DOJ hits Rhode Island with lawsuit over voter list data
By Nancy Lavin and Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current
 |
| Trump want personal data from every source |
The U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island Tuesday morning, comes amid a nationwide federal probe into state voter rolls under the pretense of preventing election fraud, including noncitizen voting — which is extremely rare.
Since May, the Justice Department has reached out to at least 40 states seeking voter lists, including personal information typically protected under state and federal laws, like Social Security and driver’s license numbers.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore refused to comply, responding to the DOJ probe in September by offering to provide a free copy of the statewide voter list already publicly available — typically provided upon request with a $25 fee. But Amore made clear he would not hand over confidential personal information without legal action.
More than two-and-a-half months later, the DOJ answered. The 10-page complaint echoes the same arguments made in its lawsuits against eight other states, including Maine and New Hampshire.
In all of the cases, federal attorneys say the government is entitled to personal voter data under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993.
The lawsuit, which names Amore as a defendant, seeks a federal judge’s intervention to force Amore to turn over the voter registration information within five days, while declaring his refusal a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
Amore, a former high school history teacher, maintained the DOJ’s request was unconstitutional in a statement Tuesday.
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Pope Leo tells Trump: no war against Venezuela, urges compassion toward immigrants
Pope Leo Presses Trump to End Military Escalation Against Venezuela
Stephen
Prager for Common Dreams
Amid escalating threats from the White House in
recent days, Pope Leo XIV pleaded for President Donald Trump to
pursue diplomacy with Venezuela rather
than another regime change war.
But I'm sure he's paying close attention to what
the Pope is saying
“It is better to search for ways of dialogue, or perhaps
pressure, including economic pressure,” said the first American pope as he returned to Rome
from Lebanon.
Since September, the Trump
administration has launched airstrikes against at least 22 boats
mostly in the Southern Caribbean that have extrajudicially killed at least 83 people. While the
administration has claimed these people are “narcoterrorists” from Venezuela,
it has provided no
evidence to support this.
Trump said he had ordered the closing of
Venezuela’s airspace on Saturday, which has left many observers holding their
breath in expectation of military action against the South American nation.
As Reuters reported Monday, Trump also offered safe passage to Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro last month if he left the country, suggesting that regime change is the
administration’s ultimate goal.
New England kicks off $450M plan to supercharge heat pump adoption
Grabbing energy from the air
.webp)
New England winters can get wicked cold. This week, five of
the region’s states launched a $450 million effort to warm more homes in
the often-frigid region with energy-efficient, low-emission heat pumps instead
of by burning fossil fuels.
“It’s a big deal,” said Katie Dykes, commissioner of
Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “It’s unprecedented to see five states aligning together on a transformational approach to deploying more affordable
clean-heat options.”
The New England Heat Pump Accelerator is
a collaboration between Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
and Rhode Island. The initiative is funded by the federal Climate Pollution
Reduction Grants program, which was created by President Joe
Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The accelerator’s launch marks
a rare milestone for a Biden-era climate initiative amid the Trump
administration’s relentless attempts to scrap federal clean energy and
environmental programs.
The goal: Get more heat pumps into more homes through
a combination of financial incentives, educational outreach, and workforce
development.
New England is a rich target for such an effort because
of its current dependence on fossil-fuel heating. Natural gas and propane are
in wide use, and heating oil is still widespread throughout the region; more
than half of Maine’s homes are heated by oil, and the other coalition states
all use oil at rates much higher than the national average. The prevalence of
oil in particular means there’s plenty of opportunity to grow heat-pump
adoption, cut emissions, and lower residents’ energy bills.
At the same time, heat pumps have faced barriers in the
region, including the upfront cost of equipment, New England’s high price of
electricity, and misconceptions about heat pumps’ ability to work in cold
weather.
EDITOR'S NOTE: We've installed two heat pumps as adjuncts to mini-split units and can attest to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. We installed the second one this year in anticipation of Trump cancelling the energy tax credit. Glad we did. Still, even without the credit, they pay for themselves. - Will Collette
Bobby Jr.'s inexplicable war on vaccines ramps up
FDA official proposes ‘impossible’ standards for vaccine testing that could curtail access to immunizations
The top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) wants to impose vague but sweeping new standards on
vaccine testing that, health experts say, would impede the development of new
immunizations and likely curtail access to life-saving shots, according to a
memo sent to staff on October 28.
Before vaccines, 50% of children did not reach adulthood.
With vaccines, that dropped to 4%
Vinay Prasad, MD, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research (CBER), proposed the "path forward" in an
internal memo in which he claimed—but provided no evidence—that COVID-19
vaccines caused the death of 10 children.
Many infectious disease experts say Prasad should share the
evidence on which he based his argument. Linking a vaccine to an adverse event
requires a high level of evidence, including autopsy results and medical
records that rule out other causes of death and show whether the affected
person was infected with the coronavirus itself, said Paul Offit, MD, an
infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and
co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.
Prasad is "making a fairly fantastic statement,"
Offit said. "He should provide extraordinary evidence that that's clear,
and he didn't, which is incredibly irresponsible and unprofessional to
do."
In the memo, Prasad wrote that the FDA's current vaccine approval process falls short.
In the future, the FDA will "demand pre-market
randomized trials assessing clinical endpoints for most new products,"
including vaccines, Prasad wrote. He noted that COVID-19 vaccines have not been
tested in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in pregnant women. Such trials
are the most rigorous type of study, but they can cost millions of dollars and
take years to produce results.
"We will not be granting marketing authorization to
vaccines in pregnant women" without such evidence, Prasad wrote. The
memo's contents were first reported by a PBS News correspondent in
a series of posts on X, the social media platform.
Sen. Jack Reed leads push to publicly release video of US war crimes
“The Department of Defense has no choice but to release the complete, unedited footage,” said Sen. Jack Reed.
“I am deeply disturbed by what I saw this morning,” Sen.
Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
said after the briefing. “The Department of Defense has no choice but to
release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2 strike, as the
president has agreed to do.”
Reed’s remarks came after Adm. Frank Bradley and Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine briefed some members of the Senate and
House Armed Services and Intelligence committees on the so-called “double-tap”
strike, in which nine people were killed in the initial bombing and two
survivors clinging to the burning wreckage of the vessel were slain in second
attack.
Lawmakers who attended the briefing said that US Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly did not give an order to “kill everyone”
aboard the boat. However, legal experts and congressional critics contend that
the strikes are inherently illegal under international law.
Friday, December 5, 2025
Trump Is Lying About Grocery Prices. What Else?
Why should you trust someone who says things you know from your own experience are false?
President Trump has fooled too many people too many times –
many more than twice. Perhaps many people are ready to believe anything Trump
says because he attacks people who they enjoy seeing targeted. But what if this
time it is people like us who are actually the targets of Trump’s attacks?
What else can you make of it when Donald Trump tells
flagrant falsehoods about something important to our families’ well-being: the
fact that rising prices are eating up our income? What should you make of it
when Donald Trump denies something you know to be true from your own
experience?
In 2024 Trump promised voters that when he was elected, “inflation
will vanish completely.” He even vowed, further, that “prices
will come down,
and they’ll come down fast, with everything.”
“When I win, I will immediately
bring prices down.”
It has been nearly a year. Prices have not gone down.
Everyone knows this. But Donald Trump refuses to admit it.
Trump: “We have no inflation. We have no inflation.”
.png)
“No, you’re wrong,” he insisted. “Right now they’re going
down. . . . Inflation, I’ve already taken care of. … We have no inflation. We
have no inflation.”
Trump asserted prices have already dropped. “Every price
is down,” he said in
early November. “Everything is way down.” Gasoline prices have “plummeted” and
“we’re at almost $2 for gasoline.”
Really? At a gas pump near you? Here in the real world, on
Thanksgiving weekend, the national average gas price was three dollars a gallon.
“Everything” is certainly not “way down.” Prices are
obviously going up again.
You are not alone if you see a disconnect between Trump’s
pontificating and our reality.
On November 19th Fox
News released a poll on the cost of living. Eight-five
percent of Americans say they are paying more for groceries
than last year. Four out of five say their cost of utilities has gone
up. Two-thirds say their health care expenses and their housing expenses have
increased. “Everything is” not “way down.”
Nope. The
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the jump in food and other
prices for the first nine months of Trump’s presidency. (Beef up 13%. Oranges
up 15%. Electricity 7%. Natural gas 6%. Gasoline 6%.)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture certainly did not tell
Trump that produce prices are “way down.” The USDA
said food prices would “rise faster than the historical average rate
of growth” in 2025 – and projected food prices would continue to rise nearly as
fast in 2026.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for September
2025 (the latest month for which data is now available) shows prices 3% higher
than one year ago.
No one misinformed President Trump. He invented his own lies.
Just making things up that sound good is second nature to Donald Trump.
Remember he was going
to make Mexico pay for the wall? Cap credit
card interest rates at 10%? Make in-vitro
fertilization treatment free? End
the Ukraine war on Day One? (Trump now claims that was “said in
jest.” Ending a war is a joke?) Provide a tax credit for family caregivers?
(Forgotten on Day One, and certainly when Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act
gave the richest
one percent of Americans a $75,000
tax break!)
But it takes a special kind of chutzpah to tell people who
see their grocery prices going up that their grocery prices are going down.
Trump, like one of the Marx Brothers in a 1933 movie, is saying, “Who you gonna
believe, me or your own eyes?”
If you believe your own eyes about the prices you see in the
supermarket and on your utility bill, Trump thinks you’re a sucker – for being
taken in by “a
con job by the Democrats.”
It’s time to ask ourselves: Who’s running the con job? And
what else has Donald Trump been saying that just ain’t so?
Here’s one easy example: Who is paying the tariffs on the
things you buy that come from overseas?
Donald Trump told voters over and over during the 2024
campaign that they
would not be paying for tariffs. Tariffs are “a tax on another
country,” Trump insisted. “It’s not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be
a cost to another country.”
That was a lie. Ask any business person. Tariffs are a sales
tax that U.S.
importers are paying, and since they are passing the expense on in higher
prices, you are bearing the expense. They are part of the reason prices are
going up.
Trump recently admitted the lie. In response to the soaring
prices of tariff-burdened foods like coffee, tea, and bananas (coffee
is up 20%), Trump recently cut those tariffs, saying
that would bring down coffee prices “in a very short period of time.”
The only way a tariff cut can bring down prices is when tariffs were the reason
prices went up in the first place.
Sometimes Trump’s lies are so obvious it’s hard to believe
even MAGA supporters take them seriously. Consider the lie about renaming the
Gulf of Mexico.
“I called the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America,” Trump
explained, “because to me, it was always the Gulf of America. We have 92
percent of the frontage. Why isn’t it the Gulf of America?”
The black line shows U.S. coastal frontage from Texas to Florida. The red line shows the rest of the Gulf’s coastal frontage, along Mexico and part of Cuba. Does it look to you like the black line is 92% of all the shoreline? No one could claim that with a straight face. Except Donald Trump. He thinks Americans are too dumb to notice his lies.
Here is a more consequential lie for the 83
million people – about one in five Americans – who rely on Medicaid for
comprehensive coverage of health and long-term care. What Trump called the “One
Big Beautiful Bill” made savage cuts in the Medicaid program, based on One Big
Ugly Lie.
$1 trillion dollars taken from Medicaid. $1 trillion
given to the one percent.
Trump said
he was going to leave Medicaid alone. “We’re not doing any cutting of
anything meaningful,” he said. “We’re not changing Medicaid.” Immediately after
his Big Beautiful Bill was passed, Trump
repeated the claim that “we’re not going to touch” Medicaid.
False. Trump’s bill will, over a ten year period, hack $1
trillion off Medicaid funding, by making it more difficult for
individuals to qualify or remain qualified for Medicaid, reducing benefit and
reimbursement rates, and other changes. Over
14 million people will lose health coverage.
The American
Medical Association condemned the bill:
“Care will be less accessible, and patients may simply
forego seeing their physician because the lifelines of Medicaid and CHIP [the
Child Health Insurance Program] are severed. … This bill will make patients
sicker. … Acute, treatable illnesses will turn into life-threatening or costly
chronic conditions.”
About one trillion dollars taken from Medicaid is just
about the right amount to pay for the One Big Beautiful Bill’s $1
trillion tax gift to the top one percent of Americans. These
are people who make more than $1,149,000
each year. They will get a much-needed $75,400 tax break next year.
Finally, let’s look at Trump’s lies about undocumented
immigrants. He wants to deport over 10 million people, an action that Trump’s
own Labor Department has said is already making food
shortages and increased food prices likely, and is impacting home
construction, meat packing and the availability of home health aides.
Trump seeks to justify the disruption and downright cruelty
by saying he’s only deporting “the worst of the worst.” But there aren’t
millions of criminals among the immigrants who came to America without proper
authorization. They came seeking a better life or desperate to escape brutal
gang violence in their homelands, and the overwhelming majority are law-abiding
and hard working.
The ice cream man isn’t the “worst of the worst”
Even Fox
news reports that the “worst of the worst” claim is false: “The
majority of people currently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. Of
those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes.”
A U.S. government-funded
study confirmed the point, finding that “undocumented immigrants are
arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent
and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property
crimes.”
Common sense tells us Trum
p is lying. ICE is not seizing
people for deportation by the millions by targeting particular individuals
found guilty of serious crimes. By the U.S.
government’s own explanation in court, ICE “contact teams” try to find
undocumented immigrants by looking for individuals who have a Spanish accent or
look Hispanic and who are found in locations such as bus stops, car washes, day
laborer pickup sites, and agricultural sites.
ICE’s targets are not the worst of the worst. In Culver City
they seized a beloved ice
cream man. Law-abiding young people, who were brought here as small
children, are being targeted for deportation from the only country they know,
the U.S.A. when they are about
to graduate from high school. Day laborers at Home Depot. Shoppers in a
Walmart parking lot. Patients in a hospital.
Trump’s lies about immigrants are shameful.
It would take an encyclopedia to list and correct all the lies Donald Trump has told. When you encounter Trump’s pronouncements on matters such as whether federal troops are needed in our cities – whether crime is out of control – whether all third-world immigrants are a threat – whether voter fraud is a real problem – whether civil rights laws discriminate against white people – whether the 2020 election was stolen from Trump – or whether anything Donald Trump does not like to hear must be fake news, ask yourself: Are groceries cheaper?
Subscriptions to Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman are free at this time. If you find my writing of value, please like, subscribe and recommend Reasoning Together to your friends. Thank you.
You may also be interested in my road-trip novel / social thriller Mississippi Reckoning. Read an excerpt. Read the Progressive Charlestown review HERE.
Goodbye and thank you!
Dr. Ashish Jha, a familiar face during COVID pandemic, stepping down as Brown’s public health dean
By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
Jha will step down at the end of December to spearhead “an initiative that aims to bolster the nation’s defenses against emerging pandemic and biological threats,” the school announced Thursday. The unnamed initiative will continue the work Jha started in April 2022 as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.
But that was all the information available Thursday about Jha’s new venture.
“At this time there are no additional details to be shared on what he is doing next,” Rob Hancock, a spokesperson for the School of Public Health, said in an email.
Jha said in emailed comments Thursday evening that his new venture will be informed by his time at Brown and as a face of the federal response to COVID — experiences which taught him how to communicate public health challenges to non-scientists.
Vaccinating newborns against hepatitis B saves lives.
Why might a CDC panel stop recommending it?
Alex Lee suffered for years because of a chronic hepatitis B
infection.
RFK Jr. is the problem. He thinks vaccines are bad
but taking his grandkids to swim in sewage,
despite warning signs, is fine.
Like many people with chronic hepatitis B, Lee contracted
the virus from his mother during birth. Lee didn't learn he was infected until
he was 40, when his mother underwent a liver transplant due to organ failure
caused by hepatitis B.
By the time Lee was diagnosed, he already had advanced
cirrhosis, a serious liver disease. He has since undergone surgery to remove
growths on his liver, followed by chemotherapy to treat liver cancer caused by
the virus, as well as a liver transplant. Although Lee is healthy today at 68,
he will need to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life to prevent
his immune system from attacking his new liver.
Yet Lee considers himself lucky; he doesn't need to worry
that his children will develop the same disease. All three were vaccinated
against hepatitis B, the first anti-cancer vaccine approved in the United
States.
"I would recommend all babies take the
vaccination," said Lee, a volunteer health educator for San Francisco Hep
B Free, a nonprofit that educates community members about hepatitis B. "I
was lucky that I found out early and that my liver cancer was not
advanced."
A 99% drop in hepatitis B
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first
recommended vaccinating all babies against hepatitis B at birth in 1991. Since
then, chronic hepatitis B infections in children and adolescents have fallen by 99%.
A study published in 2022 found that US children who
received the vaccines as newborns were 22% less likely to die from
any cause.
The universal birth dose of hepatitis vaccine "has been
incredibly effective,” said Ravi Jhaveri, MD, head of infectious diseases
at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “The US is in many ways is an
envy of the world because we have been able to do this."
Since 1991, the universal HBV birth dose has prevented more than
500,000 childhood infections and prevented an estimated 90,100
childhood deaths, according to a joint statement from the American Public
Health Association and 72 public health experts that was submitted as a public
comment in response to an upcoming meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)