Aussie experts question why people who are unqualified to comment are steering the conversation.
United States of America president Donald Trump will cut the number of recommended childhood vaccinations and split the MMR vaccine into three doses. Experts say GPs are key to stopping misinformation.
Children are now advised to receive 11 vaccines instead of the previous 18 recommended by the American Academy of Paediatrics, with doses spread over time, despite the absence of any immunological evidence supporting the change of schedule.
The order now recommends that vaccines for covid, rotavirus, the flu, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis be administered based on shared clinical decision-making.
Professor Paul Griffin, director of Infectious Diseases at Mater Health Services, told The Medical Republic that while covid was perhaps the least concerning on the list, demoting the other vaccinations would have long-term consequences.
“We know hepatitis B has been a major point of contention over there because of a lack of understanding of what that vaccine achieves, and some very significant misinformation underpinning the reluctance there,” he said.
“It’s a terrible disease if it’s not prevented, and we’ve got the tools to do that.”
But another trouble, Professor Griffin told TMR, is that changing the recommendations can lead to uncertainty and distrust.
Moreover, splitting the MMR vaccine into three separate vaccines would pose several complications.
Firstly, the vaccines aren’t routinely manufactured separately – meaning there’d be a change in supply, Professor Griffin said.
“One of the biggest concerns is it’s going to increase the number of visits and therefore costs, and thus also the potential for people to perhaps not get all of the vaccines as scheduled, reducing protection,” he said.
There also isn’t evidence to support the separation of these vaccines.
“Before we combine vaccines, we do studies to make sure there’s both no reduction in the protection patients receive, nor a significant increase in side effects,” Professor Griffin said.
He referred to the MMRV vaccine, which in some studies showed slightly higher rates of fever at certain ages, leading to guidelines advising against administering MMR and varicella simultaneously.
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President Trump has long expressed doubts about the safety of MMR vaccines and their link to autism, and more recently linked autism to paracetamol use during pregnancy – a claim quickly dismissed as “garbage” by Australian doctors.
He instead promoted leucovorin, a derivative of vitamin B9, which saw Google searches soar following his September 2025 press conference.
“We know definitively that Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper, linking the MMR vaccine to autism, has been retracted based on its poor quality and essentially fraudulent propositions,” Professor Griffin said.
It’s not only been extensively studied, he said, but “suitably disproven” – there is simply no evidence to substantiate such claims.
Further investigation would only render future resources redundant and potentially limit other discoveries that could greatly improve public health, he told TMR.
“We [should] allow these sorts of decisions to be left to the genuine experts, based on robust data, not to those who may not necessarily have the level of knowledge necessary to make informed decisions like that,” Professor Griffin said.
While US hospitals and doctors may choose to ignore the Trump administration’s recommendations, Professor Griffin said president Trump’s executive order would undoubtedly have an impact down under, particularly given the proliferation of misinformation on social media and AI platforms.
“A lot of people who were hesitant or reluctant before, or propagating misinformation, see this as validation and proof that they were right all along,” he said.
Australia has already experienced its fair share of measles outbreaks this year, in part due to overseas travel, a decline in childhood vaccination rates and under-immunisation among adults aged 20 to 49.
A 2025 survey by Australia’s National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance found that parents of unvaccinated children mainly doubted vaccine safety, thought it was inadequate in protecting others, and lacked trust in practitioners’ information.
Professor Griffin said GPs and pharmacists are at the centre of countering misinformation and providing well-informed advice and directed clinicians to the Australian Immunisation Handbook, and webinars from organisations such as the Immunisation Coalition.
“The Australian Centre for Disease Control is a great repository of information on communicable diseases and their prevention, and another good place GPs can refer to.”
Doctors maintaining up-to-date knowledge of vaccination guidelines, the rationale, and the data supporting them as part of their CPD was also essential, Professor Griffin said.
“We know with various levels of language competency, education, and health literacy that information needs to be tailored to the individual patients. But that’s what GPs do all day, every day,” he said.
Despite uncertainty abroad, Professor Griffin said Australia’s National Immunisation Program has excellent guidelines.
“We have a group that reviews information all the time. If new data comes to hand, we revise those guidelines appropriately,” he said.
“We’ve made some changes to pneumococcal vaccination recently, which is a good example of that.”
