US President Donald Trump, with conservative Jayme Leagh Franklin and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy jnr, in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo / Jim Watson, AFP
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order pushing for a rethink of school vaccine mandates and repeating calls for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be separated into three individual shots.
Curbing vaccines has been a key priority for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy jnr,
who founded an anti-vaccine nonprofit and has long promoted a disproven link between immunisation and autism.
The US federal Government does not have direct control over several areas covered by the order. States, for example, have the authority to require vaccinations for students to attend school.
On these points Trump’s move is more of a suggestion than an order.
“States and territories are advised to review” the Trump Administration’s recommendations on “immunisation requirements for contexts such as school enrolment and attendance”, the order states.
In another section, it says the US Health and Human Services Department will form a task force to offer the MMR shot as individual vaccines “by working with the private sector and other countries as appropriate, while guaranteeing continued availability of combination vaccines and those vaccines recommended for shared clinical decision-making”.
Years of scientific evidence supports the safety of a combined MMR vaccine.
Public health experts have long advised that the combined shot offers children more protection faster and also decreases the logistical hurdles for parents who may struggle to make multiple appointments.
Yet during the Oval Office signing, Trump made a series of incendiary and unsupported statements, including: “Together, there could be a possibility they are quite lethal”.
In a call with reporters, Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP), estimated it would take more than a decade to develop approved separated vaccines in the US.
Aaron Milstone, a member of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, said: “We’re advising that you continue to give children a vaccine that has decades of safety data”.
The Trump Administration’s push to overhaul vaccine policy comes as its efforts to implement major changes were blocked by a federal court this year, pending further litigation.
The judge’s stay preventing the overhaul sided with major medical organisations, which asserted that the Trump Administration’s actions were unlawful.
The US President’s latest order also arrives as children across the country are readying to return to school, and as the US suffers its worst measles outbreak in 35 years.
