Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the crucial well-known vaccine skeptics within the U.S., tried to distance himself from his many years of anti-vaccine sentiment throughout his Jan. 29 listening to to be confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS). If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee companies together with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC), the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
“Information stories have claimed that I’m anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I’m neither. I’m pro-safety,” Kennedy mentioned in his opening assertion earlier than the Senate Committee on Finance, prompting a protester to shout, “He lies!” Kennedy added that each one of his kids are vaccinated—a call he has previously said he regrets—and mentioned vaccines “play a essential function in well being care.”
Some Republican senators accepted Kennedy’s pro-vaccine feedback on the listening to. However many senators—together with Oregon’s Ron Wyden, a Democrat—pressed Kennedy on discrepancies between his previous public statements—during which he has repeatedly questioned the protection and necessity of vaccines and mentioned they’re linked to autism and power ailments—and his sanitized feedback in the course of the listening to. “Mr. Kennedy, all of these items can’t be true,” Wyden mentioned. “So are you mendacity to Congress as we speak while you say you might be pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all these podcasts?”
Right here’s what to learn about Kennedy’s historical past on vaccines.
What RFK has mentioned previously about vaccines
Regardless of Kennedy’s efforts to distance himself from the anti-vaccine movement in the course of the listening to, he has “made a profession” out of “planting seeds of doubt about vaccines,” says James Hodge, director of the Heart for Public Well being Legislation and Coverage at Arizona State College.
Kennedy has for years questioned vaccines and spread misinformation about them, ignoring broad scientific consensus about their security and efficacy to argue that they haven’t been adequately studied. He has additionally perpetuated the totally disproven idea that vaccines cause autism. “I do imagine that autism does come from vaccines,” Kennedy mentioned in a 2023 interview with Fox Information. Kennedy repeated that view in non-public emails not too long ago published by STAT, together with different false claims—together with that one COVID-19 vaccine had a “100% harm price” in early medical trials.
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He “has a collection of beliefs that aren’t supported by science,” mentioned Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Schooling Heart at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in a November interview with TIME.
Kennedy’s views are amplified by Kids’s Well being Protection (CHD), a nonprofit he based and recently resigned from as he’s thought of for HHS secretary. CHD’s web site implies, with out qualitative proof, that vaccines are in charge for rising charges of autism and power illness within the U.S. The group has additionally introduced authorized challenges in opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and legal guidelines that enable minors to be vaccinated with out parental consent.
What occurred with the measles outbreak in Samoa
Kennedy and CHD have reportedly exploited tragedy to unfold anti-vaccine sentiment. In 2018, two infants in Samoa died after they received improperly prepared measles, mumps, and rubella shots, resulting in a short lived pause on vaccine distribution. Even after common vaccination resumed, some dad and mom have been afraid to have their kids vaccinated, worsening a dramatic drop within the small South Pacific nation’s vaccination charges.
Within the aftermath of the incident, Kennedy traveled to Samoa and met with quite a few well being officers, apparently to perpetuate anti-vaccine ideas. (Kennedy denied that characterization in the course of the listening to, saying that his journey had “nothing to do with vaccines.”) CHD additionally used the state of affairs as fodder for social media posts questioning vaccines, as NBC News recently reported.
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Not lengthy after Kennedy’s go to, a measles outbreak killed 83 individuals—most of them kids—in Samoa. Whereas Kennedy has repeatedly denied accountability for the outbreak, many scientific specialists disagree. Offit mentioned in November that there’s “no higher instance” of the real-world penalties of vaccine skepticism.
Kennedy once more denied blame in the course of the listening to. “You can not discover a single Samoan who will say, ‘I did not get a vaccine due to Bobby Kennedy,’” he mentioned.
Kennedy’s stance on banning vaccines
Through the listening to, Kennedy mentioned he’ll “do nothing, as HHS secretary, that makes it troublesome or discourages individuals from taking” vaccines, saying particularly that he helps the polio and measles vaccines.
However his previous actions—and ongoing alliances—make specialists and lawmakers doubt these assurances. In 2021, on behalf of CHD, Kennedy unsuccessfully petitioned the FDA to reverse its emergency authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and chorus from absolutely approving any COVID-19 photographs sooner or later, according to the New York Instances. The next 12 months, Aaron Siri, a lawyer working intently with Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine, the Instances reported in December. (The petition is reportedly nonetheless underneath assessment.) And, as of 2024, Kennedy had ongoing financial relationships with regulation companies suing vaccine producers.
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Kennedy tried to stroll again a few of his most blatantly anti-vaccine statements in the course of the listening to, sparking anger from a number of lawmakers. “There isn’t any motive that any of us ought to imagine that you’ve got reversed the anti-vaccine views that you’ve got promoted for 25 years,” mentioned New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat.
How Kennedy might form vaccine coverage as HHS secretary
HHS wouldn’t must ban or rescind approvals of vaccines to have an effect on U.S. well being coverage, Hodge says. His research has outlined numerous ways {that a} Kennedy-led HHS might erode present vaccine requirements, from including extra warning labels to vaccine packaging to refusing to inventory the Strategic Nationwide Stockpile with photographs wanted for emergencies. Kennedy outlined some similar possibilities in his 2023 guide Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Converse.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, listed others in the course of the listening to, together with making it simpler for individuals to sue vaccine makers based mostly on “junk science” or search compensation for allegedly vaccine-related well being points. “Nobody needs to be fooled,” Warren mentioned. If confirmed, “Kennedy may have the facility to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing throughout our nation.”
Even seemingly small modifications, Hodge says, have the potential to chip away on the confidence People have in vaccines, thereby decreasing vaccination charges and rising the possibilities of illness outbreaks. Hodge additionally factors to 3 main pathways by which Kennedy might act. First, he might affect individuals who maintain key roles on the FDA and CDC in addition to on these companies’ vaccine advisory committees, probably slow-walking the approval of latest vaccines and influencing steering about which already-approved photographs needs to be advisable for most of the people and lined by insurance coverage.
Second, his HHS might connect strings to federal funding for vaccines. Whereas states set their very own vaccine insurance policies, together with that are required for youngsters getting into college, the CDC provides much of the funding states use to hold out their vaccination applications. The federal authorities might require states to adjust to sure insurance policies set by Kennedy’s HHS in the event that they wish to proceed to obtain that cash, Hodge says.
Third, and maybe most significantly, Kennedy would have a serious and official platform from which to unfold vaccine skepticism. “The anti-public-health affect of that, from a pure influencer perspective, is profound—though it doesn’t require any authorized motion,” Hodge says. “It will be damaging past all management.”
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