President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on childhood vaccinations has sparked concern among health experts, who argue that the plan would impose significant financial and logistical challenges on parents, health providers, and drugmakers.

Separating Combination Shots

The order calls for separating combination shots, including the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, into separate injections. This would require drugmakers to revive individual vaccines that have not been marketed separately in the U.S. for decades.

According to Dr. Anna Durbin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, there is no scientific basis for changing the current vaccination approach. ‘We do things that are less convenient and more expensive if there’s a good reason to do it,’ she said. ‘There is no good justification for this. I think it’s very bad public health policy.’

Logistical Challenges

The plan would also mean that parents would need to make many more trips to the doctor’s office, which could lead to missed appointments and decreased vaccination rates. Additionally, the changes would require significant investments from drugmakers, including the development of new manufacturing facilities and the conduct of large studies to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of the individual vaccines.

Dr. Jesse Goodman, a former FDA vaccine chief, noted that the process of designing, constructing, and getting federal sign-off for new vaccine plants typically takes about five years. ‘I don’t think there’s any comparable example of removing hugely effective public health measures that protect babies for no documented scientific reason,’ he said.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.