Actual Incidence rate of hepatitis B virus in the US, year 2000:
2.1 cases per 100,000 population

Hardly an epidemic.   Of that 2.1 persons per one hundred thousand, less than 2% are children.  This places incidence of hep B virus in US children at something like 0.04 cases per hundred thousand, or perhaps 4 cases per ten million children.  CRAZY!  Odds of getting hit by lightening are probably higher, but we can confirm that too if we like.

Please, everyone note, this is CASE incidence.  Not deaths.  I have heard Maurice Hilleman say on TV that there are some 6,000 DEATHS per year from hepatitis B in the US.  Either he doesn't know how to read tables or he lied.  There were some 6100 cases, not deaths.  Deaths would be about 10% of this figure or less.

Cases for 2000 was reported at 6,144.  Even those are inflated, according to CDC publication (Healthy People 2000 Statistical Notes: Priority Data Needs:  Sources of National, State, and Local level Data and Data Collection Systems.  No. 15, December 1997).  I quote from page 9 of this publication:  "...national estimates of hepatitis B incidence are corrected for under reporting using an algorithm that adjusts incidence upward by approximately 6-fold....this item is not amenable to survey data collection due to low incidence."

There is no epidemic of hepatitis B in the US. The CDC gets away with making up these crazy six figure case reports by guessing that there are a lot of people walking around unaware that they have hepatitis B virus.  No one will ever know if that is true, and it doesn't matter anyway, because even if it were (a) these cases don't transmit to infants and children (b) they are so NOT sick, they don't even seek care, and (c) pregnant mothers who are infected and who thus put their infants at risk are screened, and the babies are treated with the vax and gamma globulin at birth.

The only people with a "real concern" for hep B are the ones who are desperate to keep the market for the vaccine viable.

Judy C.