MTM - Why are we giving Hepatitis B Vaccine to Newborns?

A newborn’s first day should be calm, not a crash course in public health policy. We dive into why a vaccine built for adult risk factors—unprotected sex and shared needles—became a universal ritual in the nursery, and we trace the decisions, incentives, and safety debates that cemented it there. From hospital “quality measures” that reward blanket compliance to maternal screening protocols that already catch most perinatal risk, we examine whether universal dosing truly delivers the best protection at the right time.

I walk through the historical arc: early hepatitis B vaccines with low adult uptake, the strategic shift to the childhood schedule, and the guarantee of coverage that followed. Along the way, we unpack claims about waning immunity, reported adverse events, and the contested science around autoimmunity and neurologic outcomes. You’ll hear how trial duration, data interpretation, and institutional incentives can influence both perception and policy—and why that matters when the patient is hours old.

The goal isn’t outrage; it’s clarity. We explore practical alternatives: rigorous maternal screening, immediate prophylaxis for exposed newborns, and focused vaccination for high-risk adolescents and adults, including healthcare workers and people who inject drugs. Most of all, we center informed consent and transparent communication so families can weigh risks and benefits without pressure. If you care about medical ethics, vaccine policy, and protecting kids with smart, targeted prevention, this conversation opens a path toward a more balanced approach.

If this episode challenged your assumptions or gave you a clearer view of the tradeoffs, share it with a friend, subscribe for more evidence-focused conversations, and leave a review with your take—should newborn vaccination remain universal or shift to targeted protection?

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Topic Setup
• 0:34 Who Hep B Was Built For
• 2:07 Why Newborns Receive The Shot
• 3:14 Quality Measures And Hospital Pressure
• 6:05 Safety Signals And Early Warnings
• 8:59 Legal Battles And Global Responses
• 10:42 Autism, Autoimmunity, And Data Claims
• 13:05 Molecular Mimicry Theory Explained
• 15:05 Mandates, Markets, And Policy Shifts
• 17:25 Outcomes, Injuries, And Reassessment
• 19:15 Calls To Action And Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

So listen because the doctor is in.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty, dusty scrapbook. Well, let's talk today about the hepatitis B vaccine that has been mandated for children in order for them to attend public schools in the United States. The first question is who gets the hepatitis B vaccine? When it first came on the market, it was designed for adults who are drug addicts and adults who practice illicit sex. Especially bizarre sexual practices, i.e. men who have sex with men. Hepatitis B is transmitted via needles or sexual contact. Sexual contact. Yet this vaccine is now routinely given to babies on their first day of life. Who should get the hepatitis B vaccine? Well, when it first came on the market, it was designed for IV drug abusers who are prone to get hepatitis B by sharing dirty needles, and adults with bizarre sexual practices, men who have multiple sexual partners, men who have sex with men, and healthcare workers who are subject to accidental needle sticks. And I understand that. Well why why am I discussing this at all? Well, this month, for the first time in literally decades, the CDC's ACIP, that's the vaccine advisory panel, is is meeting to consider changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, including the hepatitis B vaccine. And so I want us to talk about that today. Why why even do we inject a vaccine meant for adult high risk groups into every single newborn? Have you ever even asked that question? The truth of that reveals some very shaky science, a whole host of ignored safety signals, and some hidden agendas that you need to be made aware of. And that debate is not new. The hepatitis B vaccine has been hotly debated for years, and that debate is getting a lot more bizarre. So let's ask the question again. Why do we vaccinate every single newborn? I mean, again, the hepatitis B virus is a bloodborne pathogen that with transmission that occurs primarily through unprotected sex, blood exchanges like shared dirty needles used by IV drug abusers. There is a minuscule risk of parent to child, mother-to-child transmission during childbirth. Only one of those risk factors is relevant to a newborn. But you know this, expectant mothers typically are screened for hepatitis B during their prenatal care anyway. And now here's the risk. The risk of transmitting hepatitis B from an infected mother to her child in the United States is one in seven million. And there are only four million newborns in the United States every year. So why exactly do we give the hepatitis B vaccine to newborns? Does anybody out there in my listening audience know? Are we protecting our children for a lifetime of unprotected sex and drugs? And does the protection that we give to newborns even last until adulthood? And the answer to that's no. Over 50% of children tested at five years of age no longer have protection. Here's the answer, the short answer. Think quality measures. And some of you medical folks out there know what quality measures are. And that's the percentage of newborns that get a hepatitis B vaccine. You see, hospitals have quality measures that insurance companies foist upon medical doctors, medical clinics, hospitals. And one of the quality measures that are used to tell if a hospital is a good hospital is what percentage of newborns get a hepatitis B vaccine. And if they fall below a certain percentage, then that's not a good hospital. And some of you out there have had a baby and you told the nursery staff we don't want our child to have a hepatitis B vaccine, and they have literally browbeat you with reasons why you should have or should give your baby the hepatitis B vaccine. Now, a lot of it's because all the staff have drunk the Kool-Aid, but a lot of it is because of quality measures. They don't want to fall below that designated percentage that qualifies them as a good hospital. But let me tell you, quality measures is about following protocol of the CDC that benefits pharmaceutical companies, and it's not about you and your baby. And I'm telling you, young mothers, when you go in that hospital to deliver your baby, you need to put up a sign in the room that says, we do not want hepatitis B vaccine. You tell every nurse, you tell every doctor, and do not let your baby out of your sight because some well-meaning nurse will give your baby the vaccine because everybody else gets the vaccine. And it's incredulous to them that you would not want your baby to have the vaccine. The main concern surrounding giving the hepatitis vaccine to newborns is largely unfounded. The concern is not simply a matter of being anti-vax, and the concern for this vaccine certainly isn't anti-science. Let's take a look at the science together. The vaccine was first introduced in the 1980s, and early warning signs came fast and furious. There were a lot of respected vaccine researchers like Bon Dunbar, who were exposed to the pattern of autoimmune complications after her own brother was injured by the hepatitis vaccine. In 1998, an article appeared in the Journal of Science highlighting the growing concerns surrounding the vaccine, including the fact that there were attorneys representing more than 15,000 clients in France who had sued the government for downplaying the risk and exaggerating the benefits of the hepatitis B vaccine. Well, France then suspended this vaccine in schools, and I'm wondering why the United States did not pay attention to what was happening in France. A nineteen ninety nine congressional hearing in the United States laid out the issues very plainly. There were numerous severe adverse reactions, including death, seizures, autism, dysautonomia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and liver cancer, all connected to hepatitis B vaccine. Adverse reaction reports were ignored by the CDC and the pharmaceutical companies or dismissed, and there were short trial durations that missed delayed reactions. The trials only lasted four to seven days, if you can imagine that. Parents were not informed of the risk. Newborns were being vaccinated without parental consent, and parents were threatened with intervention from social services if they declined the vaccine. Vaccinating low risk newborns for an adult associated disease was just plain inappropriate. And the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was denying most claims. Now pay close attention to this. Did you know that the CDC, academia, and the vaccine manufacturers met clandestinely at a Methodist conference center in northern Georgia in the mid-1990s? The first day the question on the agenda was does the hepatitis B vaccine cause autism in young boys? At the conclusion of the first day, all three groups agreed that yes, hepatitis B vaccine was causing an increased rate of autism in young male infants. The second day of the conference, the question on the table was how can we cover this up? A whistleblower recorded secretly the entire conference for two days, and he delivered the recording to none other than Robert F. Kennedy. This was 25 years ago. Up to that point in time, Robert F. Kennedy was a lawyer for environmental causes. When he received that recording, he was catapulted into becoming an advocate for children and an ardent opponent of pediatric vaccines. And he told Congress at his recent hearing before Congress to be accepted as the HHS director that he got on his knees every day for 20 plus years praying that God would put him in a position where he could be a stronger advocate for children and an opponent of pediatric vaccines. And I would ask my listeners that we would do the same. We would pray every day that God would give him grace to fulfill the mission for which he has prayed for the last 20 years. Back in the 1990s, when it was actually possible to find a little truth about vaccines on television, ABC News aired an entire program addressing the hepatitis B vaccine. They included vaccine injured parents and parents of severely injured children, and the untold history of the hepatitis B vaccine was jaw-dropping. And they talked about contaminated trials. They talked about secret CDC rationales. And I mean, it was unbelievable what was on the television at that day that you will not find anywhere in media today because there's a media pharmaceutical CDC collusion in today's world. The studies that were available, that are available, began to show that hepatitis B vaccines increase the risk of MS, lupus, arthritis, and other autoimmune conditions. For example, in France, cases of EMS spiked by 65% after a national campaign to promote hepatitis B vaccine, not just in children, but in adults. A CDC data set showed a 12 times higher autism risk when the hepatitis B vaccine was given in the first 30 days of life. So why would that be? Why would the autism rate go up? Why would MS increase? And here's the reason why. Autoimmune conditions are caused by the hepatitis B vaccine, and it's this is a more the likely, most likely explanation. It's due to similarities in the antigen that's in the vaccine and its overlapping similarity to human myelin. Myelin is the is the fatty layer that covers the nerves that are in the neurologic system, mainly in the brain and the spinal cord. So the antigen that's in the vaccine is very similar to the myelin sheath around the nerves in the brain and in the spinal cord. And scientists believe that that's why the vaccine causes damage to the nervous system causing MS in autism. The molecular mimicry of the vaccine has been denied. And researchers and the pharmaceutical companies companies have said it just simply could not be proven. A 1994 Institute of Medicine report noted that although the preliminary data exposed many of the reactions that were attributed to the hepatitis B vaccine, no further research has been conducted. Why not? I'll tell you why. There's some things Big Pharma and their henchmen in academia just don't want to know. Well, thanks to the Institute of Medicine and thanks to Big Pharma and thanks to the CDC. Serious reactions, sometimes fatal reactions, were also reclassified as SIDS or mere coincidence, which all makes me so nauseous that I could just scream. So move on. If transmission of hepatitis B is typically due to adult risk factors, why not only give this highly uh volatile, dangerous vaccine just to adults and healthcare workers, IV drug users, and homosexual men with multiple partners, why would we give it to children? Studies have shown that it can it can in fact dramatically reduce cases in these high risk groups. Why give it to infants? I know you've asked and you're asking that same question. There's virtually no risk and immunity does in fact wane. So what's the point in giving the vaccine to our precious little children? Well, the CDC's main argument is prevention of mother-to-child transmission. But you and I know that nearly all U.S. expectant mothers are screened for hepatitis B during pregnancy, and infection rates are under 0.5%. By the numbers, millions of babies must be vaccinated to prevent a single serious outcome. And that's not an exaggeration. If a mom's status is unknown, it's mandated in states to uh screen newborns for hepatitis B anyway. So I know you're asking why the universal newborn mandate? Why does every baby have to get a vaccine? Well, a former ACIP, that's the advisory council on immunization uh practices, a former ACIP insider revealed the darker truth. It's not about maternal transmission, it's about capturing a captive audience at birth, at the hospital, before at-risk youth slip through the cracks later in life. So because the CDC was failing to reach inner city teens, they decided to vaccinate every baby in America, all four million newborns before they ever left the hospital. It was never ever medically justified. It was a bureaucratic convenience disguised as science. The hepatitis B vaccine's dark history leaves me speechless, and it should leave you speechless. Were you vaccinated for hepatitis B? What about your children? This story is really disturbing. The first hepatitis B vaccines were plasma derived, actually using infected blood. It even involved chimpanzees and human blood exchanges. That was back in the early days. This was during the early AIDS crisis in New York, San Francisco, and LA. You remember that HIV was considered to have come from a chimpanzee virus. You remember that? And it all sounded very risky. Well then a few years later in 1986, Merck rushed out of the first recombinant GMO vaccine. And that vaccine was obviously much safer. In the beginning, the first hepatitis B vaccine was expensive. I remember when it came on the market, it was about $145 for three shots compared to $2 for other routine childhood vaccines. Well, utilization was quite low among high-risk groups because it was so expensive. So here's what the regulators decided to do. They shifted strategy and they said, well, let's add it to the childhood vaccine schedule, and the government will guarantee its sales and cover the cost. And by 1991, ACIP decided to mandate the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns. And by 1999, it expanded it to all children and adolescents, and it guaranteed a market of four million new recipients each year. And it was a huge windfall for the pharmaceutical companies. Well, the parents objected. They didn't want their little kids getting a hepatitis B vaccine. They knew their children weren't using dirty needles and having illicit sex. The pediatricians resisted too. I remember I had a hard time convincing parents to take the vaccine, and I had a conscience issue with giving the vaccine. Even gay activists called it a failure of health care outreach. But the CDC pressed forward, insisting it was safe and effective for all newborn babies, despite what the science said. Decades later, the outcome couldn't be more clear. Acute hepatitis B cases have declined, but guess what? Chronic hepatitis B rates have never budged. The very condition the program was supposed to eliminate hasn't changed one iota since 1976. However, severe injuries from the vaccine have skyrocketed. So was it worth it? This month, for the first time in decades, the ACP will actually do its job and will reconsider the hepatitis B newborn mandate. And this is our chance to demand changes. I know that my listening audience believes in prayer. So I'm going to encourage you to pray, pray, pray during this month. It's not just about one vaccine, it's about how safe and effective became a slogan. It's about risk and benefit ratios and how they were buried. And it's about the human costs that have been swept aside, not just for this vaccine, but all the rest of the pediatric vaccine. It's about how bureaucrats force a medical intervention on every newborn infant, not for their health, but for control and profit. The hepatitis B saga is a warning. When government health policy is driven by politics and profit instead of good science, the children always become collateral damage. For decades, parents were never told the truth, but now the cracks are showing. This month ASIP is hearing, and it's a once in a lifetime chance to correct the terrible roller coaster ride that we've been on. If you care about medical freedom, informed consent, and protecting children, it's now time for us to act. Spread the word, contact your senators, watch the ASIP hearings, and pray, pray, pray that justice will be done for all of our precious newborns. This could be the turning point. For 30 years, America's newborns were sacrificed to a policy that never made any good sense. You're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson. Remember, Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you. And I pray that until next week, the Lord will bless you real good.

Speaker: 22:18

Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson family ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to our Facebook, Instagram,