Claim:
In 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention faced a lawsuit that alleged the agency failed to test the cumulative safety effects of its recommended 72-dose vaccine schedule for children.
Rating:
Rating: True
Context:
As of this writing, none of the lawsuit’s allegations have been proven in court, and scientific evidence supports the safety of the CDC’s vaccine schedule.
In August 2025, a claim spread online that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was being sued over its recommended vaccine schedule for children.
“CDC accused of running an illegal and unconstitutional hyper-vaccination program — NEVER once tested for cumulative safety,” one X post said.
The rumor spread on X, Facebook and Instagram.
Two physicians and a vaccine skeptic organization, Stand for Health Freedom, did, in fact, file a lawsuit on Aug. 15, 2025, that “challenges the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended childhood immunization schedule, a 72+ dose regimen.” Thus, we rate this claim true.
Some of the above posts also claimed that the CDC’s program was illegal or unconstitutional. While the lawsuit argued that the agency’s vaccine schedule violated federal and constitutional law, nothing in the complaint has been proven in court as of this writing. The CDC did not return an inquiry as to whether the claims made by the plaintiffs have any basis in fact.
As of Aug. 7, 2025, the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule for children from birth to age 18 was, in fact, about 72 doses — counting annual flu vaccines — but research has indicated that the infant immune system is “inherently capable” of handling routine vaccination.
Overwhelming research shows that vaccines are “among the most safe and effective public health interventions to prevent serious disease and death.” As with any medical intervention, there are risks and possible serious, if rare, adverse effects, but scientists almost universally agree the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the risks.
The lawsuit
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleged that the CDC has “never studied the combined effects and the accumulating dangers of administering all of the vaccines on the CDC’s recommended childhood vaccination schedule.”
The plaintiffs argued that the CDC’s guidelines broke federal law on administrative procedures and violated the right to due process and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment because the framework “irrationally denies the existence of medically vulnerable children” (see Page 23).
Physicians Paul Thomas and Kenneth P. Stoller, the individual plaintiffs listed, also claimed they had their medical licenses suspended and revoked for deviating from the CDC’s childhood vaccination guidelines, which the complaint called a violation of the doctors’ right to free speech (see Page 24).
The CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule comes from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which categorizes its recommendations under categories A and B. Category A involves recommendations for all children in an age group, whereas the ACIP recommends clinicians make decisions on an individual basis for Category B vaccines. Most childhood vaccines, as of this writing, fell under Category A.
Guidelines provided by the ACIP are not legally binding by statute, but ACIP recommendations often appear in state law.
The plaintiffs have requested that the court “vacate the Category A recommendations and require reclassification of all childhood vaccines as Category B shared clinical decision-making until CDC completes scientifically rigorous studies proving the cumulative schedule is safe” (see Page 20).
It is worth noting that in June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for pushing anti-vaccine views, replaced the entire advisory committee. Many of the new panel members reportedly have a history of vaccine skepticism.
What does the science say?
A 2013 “comprehensive examination of the immunization schedule” by the National Academy of Medicine, then called the Institute of Medicine, found “no evidence of major safety concerns associated with adherence to the childhood immunization schedule,” even though the complaint repeatedly cited this review.
While the vaccine schedule has evolved since 2013, studies on the immune system indicate that it can “respond to extremely large numbers of immunologically distinct regions of viruses and bacteria.”
Here’s a breakdown provided by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that explains the science behind how many vaccines a child could respond to by considering how many antibodies — the protein in charge of identifying and neutralizing bacteria and viruses — a child’s immune system produces from a vaccine (emphasis ours):
A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time. Assuming the quantities of antibodies likely generated by an individual in 1 ml of blood (one-fifth of a teaspoon) during seven days after exposure to a vaccine, and the number of different specificities of those antibodies, then each infant would have the capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time. Using this estimate, one would predict that if 11 vaccines were given to infants at one time, then about 0.1 percent of the immune system would be “used up.”
The hospital added that this hypothetical doesn’t even consider the fact that the white blood cells that help the body’s immune system fight off disease and illness — known as lymphocytes — are constantly replenished, meaning vaccines cannot, in fact, “use up” any of the immune system.
“The immune system has the ability to replenish about 2 billion lymphocytes each day,” the hospital said. “This replacement activity illustrates the enormous capacity of the immune system to generate lymphocytes as needed.”
Indeed, a 2002 National Academy of Medicine review — also repeatedly cited in the lawsuit — said “a review of the possible biological mechanisms for any adverse effects of multiple immunization on immune function suggests that the infant immune system is inherently capable of handling the numbers of antigens presented during routine immunization.” (Antigens cause your immune system to produce antibodies.)
In sum …
A lawsuit filed in federal court did, in fact, accuse the CDC of failing to test the cumulative safety of its recommended vaccine schedule for children. However, scientific data and researchers’ understanding of the human body demonstrate that an infant’s immune system can easily handle a large number of vaccinations.
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