Numerous professional medical associations are openly opposing President Donald Trump’s executive order to reshape the nation’s childhood vaccine schedule, calling it a “dangerous” and abrupt departure from science-based recommendations.
The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Physicians, among others, wrote in separate statements that the executive order is part of the second Trump administration’s amplification of vaccine skepticism. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s earlier attempts to change the vaccine schedule were blocked in court due to a legal challenge by the AAP.
The AAP said the order Trump signed Monday was “not only disheartening but dangerous.”
“There is no new evidence to justify significant changes to childhood immunization guidance,” the group added in a statement Monday. “Dozens of studies involving millions of people show there is no link between vaccines and autism, and yet federal leaders continue to promote this outdated, disproven idea to scare families.”
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Trump’s order calls for dividing childhood vaccines into three categories, with different recommendations for who should get them, and directs federal agencies to implement the changes. It also suggested splitting up combined vaccine doses, which are currently used to limit the number of hospital visits children must undergo, into separate shots.
The White House and conservative groups have clashed with the medical establishment over vaccine guidance since Trump returned to office.
In August 2025, eight medical groups announced in a joint statement that they were removed as liaison organizations to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — a move that barred them from reviewing scientific evidence and providing vaccine recommendations. The federal government deemed the eight groups “biased” at the time of their removal, the joint statement said.
Trump has recently pressured Kennedy to move more aggressively on changing the childhood vaccine schedule and probing a repeatedly debunked link between vaccines and autism, according to news reports.
At Trump’s press conference Monday, the president made a slew of misleading and unsubstantiated claims — including that babies get “72 jabs,” a number that some fact-checkers have said might refer to the number of recommended vaccine doses that a child is eligible to receive before the age of 18.
“Nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” Trump said Monday. “Nothing bad can happen.”
Medical groups firmly disagreed.
Willie Underwood III, the president of the American Medical Association, one of the most influential medical groups in the country, said upending a “proven vaccination schedule without credible evidence risks” would weaken public confidence and put children’s health at risk.
The changes, if enacted, could also increase costs and place a “greater burden on families needing to schedule multiple appointments for a multiple-dose MMR vaccine,” said Jan Carney, president of the American College of Physicians.
The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine wrote in a statement that “unnecessarily changing standard vaccinations” would negatively affect the health of mothers and children, and would “harm the health of families and communities.”
The World Health Organization, which Trump withdrew the United States from, shared a social media post Tuesday explaining why “timing matters for vaccines.” The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and the Infectious Diseases Society of America also raised alarms that the changes were being proposed amid a resurgence of the measles.
“When vaccines become more difficult to obtain, fewer children are protected, increasing the risk that diseases long held in check can re-emerge,” NFID Medical Director Robert Hopkins said Monday. “At a time when communities across the country are confronting the return of preventable diseases, the nation should be strengthening its ability to protect children, not putting that progress at risk.”
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