With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest pick. To direct the Department of Health and Human Servicesenvironmental lawyer’s views on vaccines are back in the spotlight.
Kennedy has been a prominent vaccine skeptic, arguing that more vaccine research is needed, though the interviews that he has “never been anti-vaccine”.
Vaccine researchers told ABC News that his latest comments are inconsistent with his past campaigns and, if confirmed, could persuade unvaccinated parents not to vaccinate their children.
“It’s not really a vaccine skeptic; I’m a vaccine skeptic,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Center for Vaccine Education, a physician in the division of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a member of the Food and Drug Administration. The administration’s Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products, told ABC News.
“Everybody who sits around the table on the FDA’s vaccine advisory board is a vaccine skeptic, right? Show us the data, prove that this vaccine is safe, prove that it’s effective, because then and only then will we authorize it, or recommend authorization or licensure,” he said. he had
Offit argued that Kennedy is a “vaccine cynic,” adding, “He believes that we’re not getting the right information, that there’s an evil alliance between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA (with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to hide the real data, and he’s going to find the real data, and that is absolute nonsense.’
Republican presidential candidate former US President Donald Trump welcomes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the stage during a Turning Point Action campaign rally on October 23, 2024 in Duluth, Georgia.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
They say vaccines cause autism
Kennedy previously said the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine – a myth that arose from a now-discredited UK paper in 1998.
The fraudulent paper has since been dismissed by health experts, retracted by the journal in which it was published, and its lead author, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license. More than a dozen high-quality studies have found no evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism.
Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said he is concerned that uncertainty about the COVID-19 vaccine has spilled over into uncertainty about childhood vaccines.
They have been more outbreaks of measles this year than last year the number of cough cases has increased fivefold this year from last year, according to CDC data, Hotez says, a sign that more parents may be increasingly skeptical of vaccines.
According to the CDC, a total of 277 measles cases have been reported in 30 states in 2024 — four times more than last year — with 16 outbreaks this year, compared to four outbreaks in 2023. About 96% of measles. this year the cases were not fully incorporated. Also, cases of whooping cough this year are at their highest level since 2014, according to CDC data.
This is because the 2023-2024 school year marks the fourth year in a row that vaccinations among kindergartens have been reduced, falling short of the 95% threshold goal aimed at preventing a single infection from sparking an outbreak. The last time this threshold was met was before the pandemic, in the 2019-2020 school year.
“Now you put someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s best-known anti-vaccine activist, at the top of the food chain, at the top of Health and Human Services,” Hotez said. “I don’t see how these things are going to get any better. However, they could start to go down even further. . . . So I’m concerned about further erosion of the number of children being vaccinated in the US.”
Claims about the COVID-19 vaccine
Kennedy also spread vaccine misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic claims Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Bill & the Melinda Gates Foundation were trying to cash in on a vaccine for COVID-19.
During December 2021 Louisiana House of Representatives meeting Discussing a proposal to require school children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Kennedy falsely called the vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
Health officials say vaccines against COVID-19 are safe and effective after, and since, clinical trials involving tens of thousands of people. helped save millions of lives.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Former Republican presidential candidate gestures as he speaks in front of former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on November 1, 2024.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
Offit says he is concerned that as head of HHS, Kennedy would help select the directors of the CDC, FDA and National Institutes of Health, and could also favor vaccine-skeptic views.
“My concern is that he’s not going to choose technically competent people,” he said. “My concern is to elect ideologues who are not well-educated about infectious diseases or vaccines, and perhaps elect ideologues who lack experience in government.”
Offit and Hotez said it will be important in the next four years for doctors to have conversations with vaccine-seeking parents to educate them about the importance of vaccinating their children, influenced by Kennedy’s vaccine-skeptic rhetoric.
Offit said he is already getting emails from pediatricians about parents who are hesitant to vaccinate their children because of Kennedy’s past comments.
“Over the last few days, I’ve gotten emails from pediatricians, one in particular from Connecticut that comes to mind, where they say, ‘Parents are coming in and saying they don’t want to vaccinate. partly because of what (Kennedy) said, what should we do?'” Offit said. “So I think that’s where the rubber meets the road. It’s definitely more work for clinicians than it used to be.”
