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How did the most successful public health intervention in human history become one of the most politically divisive issues in American life? On January 5, 2026, the CDC revised the childhood immunization schedule, moving six disease categories from universally recommended to risk-based. The decision was made by an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that had been in existence for less than four months, replacing a committee structure that had operated continuously for sixty-one years. For the first time in modern history, the American Academy of Pediatrics published its own schedule in open defiance of the federal agency. Twenty-eight states declined to follow.

This episode traces the full arc — from Edward Jenner inoculating an eight-year-old boy in 1796 to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s first year as HHS Secretary. From the eradication of smallpox to measles at a thirty-four-year high. From the Wakefield fraud to the COVID trust collapse. From the Denmark comparison that anchors the administration's argument to the structural reasons that comparison fails. From the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act to the ACIP replacement members who have seventy-eight percent fewer vaccine-specific publications than the members they replaced.

Ten chapters. Composite characters drawn from career epidemiologists, retired pediatricians, hesitant parents, and global health officials. Every position presented at its strongest before being complicated. The episode does not resolve whether Kennedy's reforms are a correction or a catastrophe. That resolution will be written by the data — by the coverage rates and outbreak curves and disease incidence projections being tracked in real time by career public health professionals whose names you will never know.

HOW THIS WAS MADE: This is an AI-assisted podcast built from a detailed editorial commission and a multi-model research pipeline. Primary synthesis and narrative by Claude Opus. Adversarial review and fact-checking by ChatGPT Pro. Social media discourse intelligence by Grok. Human editorial direction at every stage — topic selection, research direction, editorial decisions, and final review. Narrated using Kokoro text-to-speech running locally on Apple Silicon. Audio processed through an open-source broadcast voice chain.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for original reporting. The narrative uses composite characters constructed from published accounts, congressional testimony, and interviews with public health professionals. They represent documented patterns, not specific individuals, and are clearly identified as composites throughout. Every factual claim is drawn from documented sources. Where claims rest on contested evidence, the range of disagreement is noted. Sources include CDC immunization data, ACIP meeting records, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, WHO surveillance reports, the Danish Statens Serum Institut, peer-reviewed studies from The Lancet, JAMA, and the New England Journal of Medicine, and reporting from the Associated Press, Reuters, STAT News, and the New York Times.

Sources, citations, and full analysis at proxima.earth.