Alabama pediatrician weighs in on Trump’s childhood vaccine executive order

ENTERPRISE, Ala. (WSFA) - President Donald Trump’s recent Executive Order that, in part, recommends children get fewer vaccinations over a longer period of time, is being called the “gold standard” for childhood vaccinations by the President and his administration.

“This announcement is a major victory for parents’ rights, religious and constitutional rights, and for the gold standard science,” Trump said Monday at the signing ceremony.

However, many doctors nationwide like pediatrician Dr. Nola Ernest in Enterprise believe the current childhood vaccine schedule is the gold standard, and the President’s Executive Order could do harm to young people.

“This executive order, unfortunately, is based on misinformation that as that spreads, can create confusion, which can lead to our families being less safe and our children here in Alabama being less safe,” Dr. Ernst claims.

The new order, in part, calls for reducing the number of required vaccines from 18 to 11. However, states are free to create their own vaccine guidelines and Dr. Ernest says she doesn’t expect changes now or anytime soon in Alabama.

“We don’t foresee any changes coming to the actual routine immunization schedule, nor do we foresee changes in state requirements, especially here in Alabama, to immunizations that are routinely recommended for schools,” she believes.

The president also linked vaccines to autism multiple times during the signing ceremony.

“You know, there are some groups that have virtually no problem with autism and you know, I have to say this, they are groups that aren’t big into the world of vaccines,” Trump said.

Dr. Ernest says not only is that claim wrong, it’s dangerous.

“When this claim first came out many decades ago now, there were over a dozen high quality, well-funded studies in millions of children that proved that vaccines were not the link to autism,” she explained. “Bringing this claim up again diverts resources from what may actually be causing autism.”

Another falsehood purported by Trump, according to Dr. Ernest, is that vaccines can get as large as a soda bottle.

“I saw this early on, and I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination thing looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body,” Trump said.

“A can of soda is 355 milliliters, and so the actual vaccine is about 1/700 of just a can of soda, not a bottle of soda,” she said. “But I do appreciate this analogy because it gave pediatricians around the country an opportunity to show families just how tiny the amount of liquid going into a child’s body is. Even if we add up all of the recommended vaccines over their lifetime, it doesn’t come close to an entire bottle of soda.”

The order also directs the MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) vaccine to be administered in three separate shots, instead of all at once. Individual shots are not currently an option in the United States.

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