[Note: This is the first installment of a three-part series examining the CDC's rationale for its universal infant hepatitis B vaccination recommendation.]

Parents are told by public health officials and the media that they should vaccinate their children strictly according to the schedule recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC's routine childhood vaccine schedule is based on solid science, we are told, and it is imperative that all parents comply to reduce the societal disease burden. Anyone who dares to criticize or dissent from public vaccine policy is characterized as dangerously ignorant and irrational. A recent New York Times editorial, for example, characterized anyone who does so as "the enemy" and described all vaccines on the CDC's schedule as "crucial shots".