The Guardian

I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately | Robert B Shpiner

Robert B Shpiner — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:00:31 GMT

At every stage of childhood, the Trump administration is withdrawing a protection. It is also dismantling the tools that would measure the harm

A newborn’s first hours in a US hospital used to carry a quiet set of guarantees. A vitamin K injection against catastrophic bleeding. A hepatitis B vaccination. The assumption that whatever a family could afford, the country had already decided this child was worth protecting. I have spent more than 40 years in pulmonary and critical care medicine. I have seen children harmed by disease, poverty, by bad luck. I had not, until now, seen them harmed so methodically by their own government.

Read the headlines one at a time and the pattern disappears. A vaccine rule one week, a food program the next, the reorganization of an agency most people could not name. Each change arrives wrapped in a reasonable rationale: fiscal discipline, local control, parental choice. But arrange them in the order a child actually grows, and the rationales stop mattering. What you see instead is a sequence.

The Guardian

I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately | Robert B Shpiner

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