Alaska ended childhood liver cancer, and Washington noticed

Alaska Native children in western Alaska once developed liver cancer at rates that, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, led the world. The cause was hepatitis B, passed from mother to child at birth and carried for decades until it destroyed the liver.

Alaska started vaccinating every newborn against it in 1984. There has not been a case of that cancer in an Alaska Native person under 20 since 1993.

That program came up in Washington on Wednesday, when Surgeon General nominee Nicole Saphier told a Senate committee she supports giving every infant a hepatitis B dose at birth, and pointed to western Alaska as the reason it works.

Most of the rest of her hearing was about a different question. Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, a physician, pressed her to tell parents plainly that vaccines do not cause autism. Saphier said first that she had not seen repeatable evidence suggesting they do. Cassidy was not satisfied. "The way to dispel confusion is not to sow more confusion," he said, telling her the answer is simply no.

She then said: "I do not believe childhood vaccines cause autism." She called the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine the best tool available against measles. Cassidy noted that coroners have confirmed three measles deaths in Pennsylvania.