New Jersey legislators moved Monday to put state health officials in charge of vaccine guidance, after the CDC’s controversial reversal on hepatitis B shots. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A panel of New Jersey lawmakers advanced legislation Monday that would give state health officials — instead of the feds — the final word on immunization schedules and recommendations in the Garden State.
Legislators were driven to act after a Centers for Disease Control committee on Friday reversed its decades-long recommendation that all newborns get hepatitis B vaccines at birth to protect Americans from the incurable liver disease, said Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), the legislation’s prime sponsor and chair of the Senate’s health committee.
“We here in New Jersey have the opportunity and obligation to protect our families,” Vitale said.
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Lawmakers merged the bill with another that would require insurers to cover, with no copay, the cost of vaccines the state Department of Health recommends. Supporters say the move is intended to eliminate any confusion among the public, physicians, and insurers that has resulted from the CDC’s changing recommendations and put health guidance from New Jersey’s health officials “at the forefront,” Vitale said.
His committee advanced the bill along party lines, after almost two hours of testimony in a packed Statehouse committee room that pitted doctors and other health professionals who support the bill against anti-vaccine advocates.
The physicians testified that vaccines save lives and are endorsed by all major medical associations.
The decision by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to reverse its hepatitis B vaccine “caused great alarm throughout the medical community,” Dr. Jennifer H. Chuang told lawmakers.
The vaccine helped reduce the annual hepatitis B infection rate for infants and children from 16,000 cases when the vaccine was first recommended in 1991 to less than 20 now, said Chuang, a pediatrician, medical educator, and director of the residency program at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Paterson.
Chuang ticked off a grisly list of what people with liver disease endure, including abdominal pain, encephalopathy, and “bleeding from everywhere” because blood loses its ability to clot.
“Liver failure is a horrible disease. It strips one of dignity, and it is a horrible death. I cannot bear the thought of a young, innocent child needlessly carrying the burden of this awful disease,” Chuang said.
Anti-vaccine advocates accused the legislation’s supporters of playing politics and predicted state vaccine recommendations would become mandatory. They pointed to New Jersey’s nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason why they do not trust state health officials.
Alexandra Bougher, who heads a Bergen County Moms for Liberty chapter, warned that state vaccine recommendations would become “a standard families are expected to follow.”
“We cannot accept a system where one department can expand vaccine guidance or alter requirements without public debate, without scientific consensus, and without any built-in oversight. This is not good public health. This is unchecked power,” Bougher said, adding, “Parents deserve stability, not surprise mandates. They deserve informed consent, not forced compliance through bureaucratic shortcuts.”
Jeff Brown, New Jersey’s acting health commissioner, and his deputy, Dr. Novneet Sahu, who oversees public health services, said federal health officials are the ones changing vaccine guidance without scientific consensus or oversight.
Brown signed a directive Friday saying his department continues to recommend that all newborns receive a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.
He told lawmakers Monday that the CDC’s immunization advisory committee had made “a departure from considering science and evidence and a movement towards, frankly, embracing pseudoscience.”
Sahu echoed that concern.
“We’re at a very critical moment in public health. Lies, pseudoscience, the spread of misinformation are major threats in our ability to protect the public’s health,” Sahu said. “When federal leaders fail and misinformation spreads, state policies must empower New Jerseyans.”
The committee’s three Republicans voted against the bill, with Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen) voicing concerns about state health guidance becoming mandatory as it did during the pandemic.
“We all just came out of the pandemic. Our governor has the strongest executive power in the nation. And during that period of time, there were mandates on vaccines. We saw nurses, police, prison guards, school teachers get fired, told they couldn’t go. Our own colleagues were threatened that they may not be able to come and do their job if they didn’t receive vaccines and show their vaccine cards,” Schepisi said. “I’m a no.”
The committee’s Democrats supported the legislation. Sen. John McKeon (D-Essex) told critics the bill is needed because federal health officials have abandoned “mainstream science.”
“I can go through the graveyards, before several vaccines were ever put into place, and look at the children that died, going back in the ’50s and early ‘60s,” McKeon said, prompting critics to grumble loudly in complaint.
He responded: “Well, those are facts. You know, facts are stubborn things.”
Monday was the legislation’s first hearing. Lawmakers have a narrow window to get it to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk, because the current legislative session ends in mid-January.
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