REPORTER:
00:02:49
Now, the CDC committee is expected to also discuss the childhood vaccine schedule. Now, every parent knows the first few years of life, there are a lot of doctor's appointments and a lot of shots in those appointments. Why is the current schedule currently in place, and is there a risk in delaying or possibly spreading out those vaccines? PETER CHIN-HONG: Well, as we're already seeing some of the repercussions of lowering vaccine rates with measles, with whooping cough. There's potentially things that are coming down the pike, like polio, that we've forgotten for so long. So that's s vaccinations in general. But the schedule is really important because some diseases like whooping cough require many more vaccines. So to say that you can all lump them all into one time of the year or one age group really would not make sense from the immune system perspective, because the baby's immune system is very new. So it's sluggish, and it needs a little bit of more reminding for it to actually develop that antibody response that's effective. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said in different interviews that he believes some of the ingredients that caused that elevated immune response can lead to other health issues, like increased allergies. What do you say to those claims? I would say that the scientific evidence doesn't show any of this. And again, this is not something that we started recently. We have decades of information around this. And again, they have all shown to be safe. And you need that adjuvant. You need that extra sauce to make the immune system more responsive, especially in a baby. Again, because I mentioned that the immune system is very sluggish when the baby's immune system is just developing. Peter Chin-Hong, always great to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks so much, Liz.
