For the first time in decades, a major health authority – ACIP in the United States – has signalled that routine Hepatitis B vaccination at birth may not be medically necessary for the overwhelming majority of newborns. This is a remarkable admission, not because the science is new, but because the policy never made scientific sense in the first place. Hepatitis B is transmitted primarily through blood-to-blood contact, IV drug use, or sexual contact – situations newborns do not encounter.

Yet for years, questioning this policy was treated as heresy.

This shift opens the door to a conversation that Australia desperately needs but has been denied:

How robust is the safety evidence for the entire childhood schedule, and why has honest debate been suppressed for so long?

The uncomfortable truth: long-term safety studies were simply never done

Parents are routinely told that childhood vaccines are ‘safe and effective’. Doctors are expected to repeat this line unquestioningly. Yet, as Aaron Siri and many others have documented through FOI litigation, there are no placebo-controlled trials for most childhood vaccines and no studies assessing the long-term health outcomes of the full schedule.

Not one study has tracked vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children over time to measure all-cause chronic disease, neurological conditions, autoimmune rates, or developmental outcomes.

Without that data, claims of ‘long-term safety’ are beliefs – not evidence.

And the statement that ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ simply cannot be made with scientific certainty if the necessary studies have never been conducted. This is the point that Dr Andrew Wakefield attempted to raise decades ago – not that vaccines definitively caused autism, but that parents’ reports deserved investigation. For raising this possibility, his professional reputation was attacked.

The same pattern occurred in Australia with Dr John Piesse, who supported families reporting injury and paid for it with deregistration. These cases are not aberrations; they are signals. They show how aggressively the system protects the narrative.

Evidence of unintended consequences is routinely ignored

The Danish-run Guinea-Bissau studies are a perfect example. While vaccines like DTP reduced deaths from the targeted disease, infant mortality from other causes increased, particularly among girls. This is a textbook case of unintended consequences – the very thing long-term safety studies are designed to detect.

Yet instead of prompting further investigation, the findings were met with silence. Governments and pharmaceutical companies do not appear to want answers that could complicate policy, liability, or profit.

If the Hepatitis B recommendation can change, what else deserves re-examination?

The decision to reconsider day-one Hepatitis B administration is a small but significant crack in a wall that has been reinforced for decades. If something as fundamental as newborn vaccination can be revised, it raises important questions:

• What other schedule recommendations rest on shaky evidence?
• Why were doctors punished for expressing doubts that are now being validated?
• And most importantly: Why has the public been told the science is ‘settled’ when essential studies have never been performed?

The public deserves better than slogans. Parents deserve better than coercion. And doctors deserve the freedom to practise evidence-based medicine without fear of regulatory retaliation.

The broader picture: chronic disease, neurological, autoimmune and excess deaths

Recent conversations and emerging research highlight that vaccine safety considerations must extend beyond immediate adverse events and include:

• Potential long-term neurological effects
• Rising rates of autoimmune diseases
• Associations with chronic multisystem illness
• Possible excess mortality signals

While no conclusive causal links have been universally accepted, the lack of thorough, transparent, and long-term research means these signals cannot be ignored.

Australia has not adequately addressed these concerns or supported open scientific inquiry into them. The absence of robust data or acknowledgment only deepens public mistrust.

No-Jab-No-Play: legally questionable, ethically corrosive

Australia’s No-Jab-No-Play policy, restricting childcare and preschool access for unvaccinated children, was the first step in coercing vaccination through social means.

This was followed by the far more aggressive No-Jab-No-Pay policy during the Covid pandemic, which not only withheld financial benefits but also directly threatened employment, effectively telling citizens, parents, and students: get vaccinated or risk losing your job.

Together, these measures coerced compliance not through informed consent but through fear of financial hardship and loss of livelihood.

Both policies raise serious legal and ethical concerns, violating fundamental rights to bodily autonomy, proportionality, and voluntary medical decision-making. The use of coercion is itself an admission of policy weakness. When a product is self-evidently safe and effective, persuasion suffices. Coercion is needed only when debate would reveal problems.

AHPRA’s role: protection of the public – or protection of the narrative?

During Covid, AHPRA upheld an environment where questioning vaccine safety or policy could cost a doctor their career. In my view, the regulator’s function shifted from oversight to enforcement – not of science, but of compliance. Doctors were told that expressing dissent could ‘undermine public confidence’, as if confidence were more important than accuracy, transparency, or informed consent.

By suppressing legitimate scientific discussion, it is my opinion that AHPRA has acted in direct opposition to its mandate to protect the public. Public safety requires open debate, not censorship.

This suppression is not an isolated phenomenon

Across Western democracies, governments have adopted an increasingly interventionist stance towards speech:

• Australia’s federal police leadership has spoken of monitoring individuals whose views may ‘undermine social cohesion’.
• FOI processes are being slowed and obstructed.
• Proposed misinformation legislation would give government-aligned bodies power to punish dissenting viewpoints.
• Social media platforms have admitted to removing or suppressing posts at the request of government agencies.

This is not about medicine alone. It is part of a broader shift in which governments and large institutions seek to insulate themselves from public scrutiny.

When the same pattern appears in health policy – especially vaccine policy – it should not surprise us. What should alarm us is how seamlessly it has been accepted.

The door is open – we must not let it close again

The Hepatitis B development is not just a policy update; it is an invitation. It invites us to question assumptions, demand proper safety science, and insist that debate be permitted – not punished.

If governments wish to rebuild trust, the answer is not more censorship, more suppression, or more punishment of medical professionals. The answer is transparency, accountability, and open scientific inquiry.

Without that, ‘public health’ becomes a euphemism for control, not protection.

Max Dec, AMPS member