President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have drastically reduced the number of recommended vaccines for little kids, prioritizing more objectively tested vaccines and religious freedom over Big Pharma profits and age-inappropriate injections.
As of 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was recommending that all children receive immunizations for 18 diseases, but the new recommendation on August 10 of this year is 11. Parents will have more freedom to decide if they want their kids to get certain vaccines or not.
Federal agencies, state governments, and schools are supposed to look at the Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations instead of relying on faulty past recommendations or Big Pharma lobbying. The White House fact sheet explained:
The Order recommends separating out the combined MMR vaccine into three single-disease shots and recommends administering all vaccines during separate medical visits to give parents more options regarding the timing and frequency of this vaccine administration. …
The Order maximizes parental choice over childhood vaccines by promoting State compliance with constitutional and Federal law related to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law, including States’ obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirement.
Trump’s Monday executive order directs the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)—Robert F. Kennedy—and the HHS Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines to present research to the executive on greater options for parents and data both from the U.S. and other countries on vaccine safety.
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Partly the change stems from recognition that the U.S. recommended more childhood vaccines than any other peer nation, sometimes up to twice as many doses as those recommended in European countries. Furthermore, transparency is a much better way of ensuring public trust than mandates.
In 1980, American children following the CDC immunization schedule received 23 vaccine doses in 7 shots against 7 different diseases. In 2024, the recommended number of routine vaccines had risen to at least 84 vaccine doses in at least 57 shots for 17 diseases, plus the RSV monoclonal antibody immunization for a total of 18 diseases. This is more than other developed nations.
The scientific assessment recommends prioritizing 11 routine childhood vaccines, while preserving flexibility for parents and doctors to make individualized decisions for higher-risk children through shared clinical decision-making.
Last December, Trump ordered an overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule. Kennedy explained back in June 2025 that the majority of the vaccines that have been added to the childhood vaccine schedule since 1986 were not tested with a placebo-controlled trial. This means that we cannot know for certain that they are safe and efficacious. Unfortunately, large pharmaceutical entities have a vested interest in not discovering if their vaccines and drugs are truly safe and effective, and too often, the companies offer incentives to government officials that bias them.
That’s what Kennedy aims to transform in public healthcare.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's young people get the education they deserve.
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