Three Kentucky babies are dead from whooping cough, a disease we know how to prevent. What kind of society lets children die from a solved problem? Their deaths were not inevitable.  In Kentucky, we know what vaccine-preventable disease looks like. Our own Sen. Mitch McConnell lives with the lifel ong effects of childhood polio. Public health once eliminated diseases like polio, but today that legacy is beginning to unravel. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the one pulling at the threads.  As families grieve the unthinkable, Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine panel weakened hepatitis B protections for newborns.  During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy explicitly told senators, “I support the measles vaccine, I support the polio vaccines, I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people taking them.” He pledged to Sen. Bill Cassidy that he would maintain the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) “without changes.” He committed to Sen. Todd Young to prioritize funding for long COVID research.  These statements were made under oath before the U.S. Senate. They weren’t vague campaign promises; they were direct assurances to senators whose votes secured his confirmation. Less than a year later,  Kennedy has broken each one of these commitments.   In June, he fired all 17 members of ACIP, the independent expert panel that sets national vaccine recommendations, and replaced them with anti-vaccine activists. His picks include Robert Malone, known for spreading COVID misinformation, and Vicky Pebsworth, a board member of an anti-vaccine organization. Four appointees are even listed in the dedication of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine book, a move that puts allies over experts. The American Academy of Pediatrics responded with alarm, warning, “families and children will be the ones to pay the price.” Kentucky families are already paying it. We have recorded 566 pertussis (whooping cough) cases this year. The most recent death will be recorded as a statistic, but that baby had a name, a story, a family. Politicians claim to care about children, but caring means telling the truth. Whooping cough is deadly to infants, and vaccines in pregnancy and early childhood are how we keep them alive.  Vaccines are not the only part of public health under attack. Kennedy eliminated the HHS Office of Long COVID even as new research shows it has overtaken asthma as the most common chronic illness in children. He shut down the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration during an overdose crisis. In Kentucky, where rural hospitals are stretched thin and addiction is a leading cause of premature death, these cuts are deadly.  Kennedy is reviving the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. To do this, he hired David Geier, who was fined for practicing medicine without a license by the state of Maryland after he and his father gave autistic children dangerous hormone injections without informed consent. Now Kennedy has put him in charge of a federal study designed to “prove” that vaccines are dangerous.  Recklessness like this has already caused harm. During the worst measles resurgence in decades, with 17 outbreaks across the U.S., including two in Kentucky, Kennedy promoted vitamin A as a treatment. Shortly after, Texas doctors treated children for vitamin A toxicity and liver damage.   RFK Jr. has broken his promises, undermined science and jeopardized the health of millions. Kentucky’s McConnell put it plainly during Kennedy’s confirmation: “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”  The question now is whether we will allow a fourth Kentucky infant to die from a preventable disease.  Three Kentucky families are living every parent’s worst nightmare, and Kennedy’s panel just voted to put more infants at risk by dismantling the hepatitis B birth-dose recommendation. The birth dose exists because screening alone fails; thousands of pregnant patients are never tested, and their newborns become infected before anyone realizes they’re at risk. When infants contract hepatitis B, nearly 90% become chronic carriers, condemned to a lifetime threatened by cirrhosis and liver cancer. Decades of data show exactly what happens when the birth dose is limited to “high-risk” infants — infection rates rise, and children pay the price.  This reversal undermines the 99% decline in childhood hepatitis B that public health achieved. It was a political decision with medical consequences for babies who haven’t even taken their first steps. The senators who confirmed Kennedy on the strength of his promises now have a responsibility to act.  When someone breaks sworn commitments and endangers children, there must be consequences. Kentucky’s congressional delegation can lead that response by demanding Kennedy’s immediate resignation from office. The post Even as Kentucky families grieve, Kennedy undermines vaccine protections for children appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less