Trump says some routine immunizations will be split into five separate shots. Vaccine experts say it won’t work

By Deidre McPhillips, Meg Tirrell, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration is planning to recommend that certain childhood immunizations be broken up into five separate shots, each with a “small amount of the vaccine.” These “20% doses” would each be given six months apart, he said.

“Instead of a child going in and having a tremendous amount of different vaccines pumped into a big proportion of the body … we’re going to recommend that they do five doses marked one, two, three, four, five and that they be given in six-month intervals, so that a small amount of the vaccine gets pumped into the body,” Trump said.

Such a plan would render vaccines ineffective and wouldn’t make them safer, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Trump also said Friday that “certain vaccines were taken out because they’re not needed until the child would be much older,” an apparent reference to the federal childhood vaccine schedule — which the administration attempted to overhaul this year before it was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

It’s unclear which vaccines Trump was referring to at Friday’s news conference; he specifically mentioned only the polio vaccine, which he said has “been amazing.”

Trump suggested that the federal vaccination schedule changes he referenced Friday would lead to a “massive reduction in autism,” even though extensive scientific studies of vaccines have yielded no evidence of a connection to autism.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has not responded to CNN’s request for further details about the plans that Trump outlined Friday.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who was standing by Trump as he outlined the planned vaccine changes — received a standing ovation Thursday at the conference of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, where he gave the keynote. He praised Trump’s embrace of vaccine skeptics, telling the conference attendees, “you have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House” and saying he would “stay in this fight.”

In August, Trump signed an executive order aimed at reshaping the federal government’s approach toward childhood vaccines, insisting that infants should receive fewer immunizations over a longer period and advising that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine be separated into three individual shots, despite little scientific evidence supporting such sweeping changes.

Trump has previously claimed that “large amounts – like vats of vaccine – are currently pumped into your child’s body” and that this supposedly large volume of fluid – “the size of a bottle of soda” – was dangerous.

The standard dose of MMR vaccine given to children around 12 months of age is 0.5 milliliters, or CCs, about one-tenth of a teaspoon.

Trump’s idea to split up the shots “is buffoonery,” said Offit, a vaccine inventor. He noted that vaccines are studied extensively so their dosing schedule is optimized for efficacy and safety, and he said that reducing the amount administered and giving more shots would make it so the vaccines don’t work while doing nothing to increase safety.

“When you create a vaccine, you do a dose response curve, and you’re trying to give the least amount of vaccine that induces an immune response that’s protective. So you don’t want to give too much, where you know you don’t need all that, and you don’t want to give too little, where it’s you know sub-immunogenic,” meaning it wouldn’t induce an immune response. Put more simply, Offit told CNN, “What he’s suggesting would not work. He’s basically saying he wants to give vaccines in a manner in which they wouldn’t be protective.”

Offit also pointed out that vaccines don’t overwhelm babies’ immune systems, as they expose us to much less than we encounter every day naturally.
“You make a billion new B and T cells every day to handle the onslaught of viruses and bacteria from your environment,” Offit said. “Vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean of what you encounter and manage every day.

“The notion that vaccines in any way are overwhelming your immune system, causing chronic disease, is just fanciful.”

CNN’s Tami Luhby, Brenda Goodman and Jen Christensen contributed to this report.

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