President Donald Trump said on Sept. 22 that people should space out vaccines for their children, rather than having them receive multiple doses in one visit.
“It’s so important to me to take, see the doctor four times or five times for a vaccine. Don’t let them pump your baby up with the largest pile of stuff you’ve ever seen in your life,” he said during a press conference on a new warning about a possible association between autism and the use of Tylenol during pregnancy.
Federal regulators on Sept. 23 sent a notice to doctors telling them that evidence supports a link between acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and autism development in children born to women who took the drug during pregnancy. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the update would be communicated to the public in a nationwide campaign.
Officials largely did not mention vaccines, apart from Trump, who at multiple times during the briefing said that parents should diverge from the official government vaccination schedule.
“Break it up, because it’s too much liquid,” he said at one point. “Too many different things are going into that baby.”
Trump said people should get separate measles, mumps, and rubella shots instead of getting the combination MMR vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that standalone shots against the three diseases are not available in the United States.
Many studies into vaccines and autism have not found a connection, although some have. Merck, which manufacturers the MMR vaccine, did not return a request for comment.
Advisers to the CDC, which maintains and updates the vaccination schedule, recently advised the CDC to stop recommending to younger children an MMR alternative containing four antigens—measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella—because of a heightened risk of febrile seizures. But the advisers said that the CDC should keep recommending the MMR vaccine, doses of which are on the schedule at about 1 year of age and 4 to 6 years of age.
Trump also said he opposes giving younger children the hepatitis B vaccine. He said they should start the regimen at 12 years of age, noting that one method of hepatitis B transmission is sexual activity. Other methods include coming into contact with blood from an infected person, according to the CDC.
The same CDC advisers were recently considering proposing a delay of the first hepatitis B vaccine dose from within 24 hours of birth to no less than 1 month of age, but they ultimately tabled the matter.
Trump was joined at the press conference by Kennedy, Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. The president prefaced his remarks on vaccines by saying that the officials would maybe make an announcement on that front at a later date.
“The gentlemen behind me, they have very strong views, and they feel that we’re right, but they’ll have more research done over the next two months,” he added later, after talking again about spacing out vaccines.
The CDC says on its website that the immunization schedules take into account different factors and that providers should adhere to them.
If a child follows the childhood schedule, he or she will receive multiple vaccines at many early visits to doctors, including five or six doses during the two-month visit.
Some officials have said that spacing out vaccines makes sense.
“Oftentimes, we suggest if you want to minimize the chance of interactions and minimize confusing side effects from one with another, you wait about two weeks between the vaccines,” Dr. Peter Marks, the top FDA vaccine official at the time, said in 2023.
The CDC’s vaccine advisers are looking at the cumulative effects of childhood vaccines.
Alternative schedules exist that avoid or delay certain shots.
“An excellent start to protecting child health and restoring trust in public health policymaking is to eliminate the CDC’s 34-year old recommendation that directs doctors to inject 12 hour old babies with hepatitis B vaccine in the newborn nursery and for drug companies to manufacture single shot vaccines rather than bundling three to six vaccines into one shot so parents are unable to make informed choices about which vaccines they want their infants and children to receive,” Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times in an email after listening to Trump’s remarks.
Others said they did not support the push to space out vaccines.
“Pediatricians know firsthand that children’s immune systems perform better after vaccination against serious, contagious diseases like polio, measles, whooping cough and Hepatitis B,” the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement after the press conference. “Spacing out or delaying vaccines means children will not have immunity against these diseases at times when they are most at risk.”
Trump said he is “a big believer in vaccines,” mentioning the polio vaccine and the COVID-19 vaccine developed during his first term in office.
Kennedy said that the announcement on acetaminophen would be followed by additional updates on investigations into the causes of autism.
“One area that we are closely examining, as the president mentioned, is vaccines,” he said, noting that some parents believe their children’s autism was caused by vaccination. “President Trump believes that we should be listening to these mothers instead of gaslighting and marginalizing them like prior administrations.”