For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Pure-Lewis in for Rachel Feldman.
This week, federal officials announced major revisions to the U.S.
vaccine schedule for kids.
The number of immunizations the health agency now recommends has dropped from protecting against 17 diseases to 11.
And these changes come as the U.S.
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., has transformed the department over the past year.
from firing several top health officials to handpicking a new CDC vaccine panel.
He says these changes are part of his Make America Healthy Again, also known as MAHA initiative,
despite the fact that much of it seemed to defy the best-known practices of public health.
I talked with Dan Vergano, a senior editor at Scientific American,
to understand what this drastic overhaul to the backbone of the country's public health system will do to well public health.
Thank you for joining us today.
Great to be with you.
I think for most people, We've grown up under a system where we take a lot of things for granted,
whether it's access to medicine or food safety.
And I think for a lot of us,
we're having difficulty maybe wrapping our heads around what this kind of upheaval would actually mean practically.
And so can you talk a little bit about like what are the consequences of this kind of massive shift?
RFK Jr.