The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the country’s repository for everything harmful in children’s health, came out Monday to say that it recommends pumping all children six months and older with more vaccines and canceling religious exemptions for immunizations required by schools.
The AAP’s policy statement comes at a time when vaccination rates among children are dropping across the country in the wake of the coronavirus vaccine debacle and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is set to finally do some research on the actual effects of the large number of vaccines given to children.
This is the same organization that has insisted uncritically that mutilating and chemically castrating children in the name of “transgender” ideology is the best way to treat children confused about their gender. The AAP has even gone as far as questioning the results of an evidence-based HHS review of the irreversible medical interventions. For the AAP, however, it seems operating based on the ideological drivel from the left must always supersede medical science.
True to form, the AAP would like state legislatures to bulldoze everyone’s religious liberty, end all “nonmedical” vaccine exemptions across the country, and have pregnant women and six-month-olds pumped full of the influenza vaccine regularly.
“Are we in some dystopian rerun of 2020?” Dr. Kat Lindley, director of the Independent Medical Association’s Fellowship Program, said in a press release. “The AAP’s tone-deaf proposal ignores the hard lessons of the COVID-19 era. Parents aren’t sheep, and they’re done with government-funded healthcare bureaucrats playing doctor with their kids. Forcing medical decisions through heavy-handed mandates is a dangerous overreach. If the AAP thinks it can bully families into submission, it’s in for a rude awakening — parents are ready to fight for their rights. This isn’t leadership; it’s a power grab that could cost the AAP its credibility in healthcare.”
The AAP apparently thinks it is the country’s newest religious authority, insisting that it knows more than Americans do about what their religions actually teach regarding vaccines.
“Among the major world religious traditions, none include scriptural or doctrinal guidelines that preclude adherents from being vaccinated,” AAP said. “Perspectives on vaccines might be drawn from religious traditions that developed independently of the major world religions as well as from the diverse denominational perspectives that exist within major religions. Just as with other types of doctrines, those related to vaccines might even be developed by small communities or individuals in ways that are completely independent from antecedent scriptural or doctrinal traditions but are, nonetheless, thought of as ‘religious’ commitments by those who hold them.”
The problem for AAP? Only five states do not allow religious exemptions.
“Forty-five states allow religious beliefs to be used as a basis for an exemption, and 15 states allow ‘personal beliefs,’ ‘philosophical,’ or ‘conscientious objection’ exemptions,” AAP continued. “Some states explicitly exclude ‘philosophical’ and ‘personal belief’ exemptions and define these as not falling under the scope of religious exemptions.”
So, are you concerned that some vaccines are developed using the cell tissue of aborted babies? Too bad, says the AAP, you’ll have to take it anyway — at least if you want your children to be able to attend school.
Are you worried about significant questions of safety around the coronavirus vaccines and their potential to injure those who take them? Go pound sand, AAP says.
Because “there is no practicable way for schools or other involved community partners to distinguish fairly among religious or other nonmedical claims,” AAP recommends treating all exemption requests as nonsense.
“Nonmedical exceptions based on religious belief can substantially limit the public health value of vaccine requirements for school attendance,” the organization asserted.
“The AAP recommends that all states, territories, and the District of Columbia eliminate all nonmedical exemptions from immunizations as a condition of school attendance,” the group states. “In addition, states and territories should develop policies to ensure that any medical exemptions are appropriate and evidence based.”
In addition to recommending the elimination of all religious exemptions and any other exemption that goes against what the American medical establishment has determined to be the acceptable thought about their vaccines, the AAP wants all pediatricians to pressure families into getting vaccines without entertaining the possibility of an exemption.
“The AAP recommends that pediatricians continue to counsel their families who request nonmedical exemptions and that they not participate in vetting or endorsing applications for nonmedical exemptions from immunization as a condition of attending child care and school,” the policy states.
The American medical establishment’s campaign for vaccines has had built-in institutional protections that have allowed those who make decisions on vaccine policy to be showered in money from big pharmaceutical companies, while exempting those companies from any kind of legal accountability if their products injure a user.
As The Federalist reported, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a powerful body within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that makes major decisions regarding vaccine policy, was staffed until early June with members taking money from big pharmaceutical companies.
Those members rubber-stamped practically everything that came to them that pushed more vaccines. They were all fired by HHS and replaced with a group of people who might actually be able to review vaccines objectively — which is why there will be the first-of-its-kind review of the childhood vaccine schedule.
Likewise, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Monday that HHS will be reforming the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which, Kennedy says, “has devolved into a morass of inefficiency, favoritism, and outright corruption as government lawyers and the Special Masters who serve as Vaccine Court judges prioritize the solvency of the HHS Trust Fund, over their duty to compensate victims.”
“The VICP routinely dismisses meritorious cases outright or drags them out for years. Instead of ‘quickly and fairly’ awarding compensation, Special Masters dismiss over half of the cases,” Kennedy continued. “Most of those that proceed typically take 5+ years to resolve, with many languishing for more than 10 years as parents struggle to care for children suffering with often extreme disabilities.”
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
