In April 2023, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his Presidential bid in Boston, promising to ‘Make America Healthy Again.’ Since becoming President Donald Trump’s secretary of health, RFK has made a mockery of this promise, undermining decades of public health consensus. RFK’s tenure has recently reached its lowest point thus far, with the explosive departure of Director Susan Monarez from the CDC. Four other officials parted with the CDC over RFK’s leadership, with one accusing him of “weaponization of public health.”
RFK’s gutting of the U.S.’s vaccine infrastructure is perhaps his most glaring failure thus far. A long-time vaccine ‘skeptic,’ RFK has spent much of his career spreading vaccine misinformation concerning safety and long-term side effects. In 2005, RFK published a now-infamous article in Rolling Stone and Salon, titled ‘Deadly Immunity.’ The piece argued a common anti-vaccine trope, supposedly identifying a link between vaccines and autism. Though this piece was later retracted, the damage was already done.
Public health experts were aghast at RFK’s recent attacks on mRNA vaccines, as well as his decision to axe $500 million in funding for future mRNA projects. It is rare in politics to find a position that requires almost no nuance; RFK’s policy is guided by pure misinformation. As Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, put it, RFK’s rhetoric on vaccines is “simply not true.”
RFK has found virtually zero public health professionals to support his crusade against vaccines. Instead of reflecting on why this might be, the Secretary of Health took matters into his own hands in June and fired all 17 members of the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). ACIP was previously responsible for creating U.S. vaccine policy, providing the framework for routine vaccines in the U.S. Kennedy Jr. said the complete shake-up of ACIP was “necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.” The truth is likely much simpler; RFK deemed it necessary to remove the qualified experts previously sitting on ACIP to free his hand on vaccines.
RFK’s new ACIP is already busy vandalizing public health. A conference held at the end of June on the influenza vaccine saw the new ACIP vote to recommend that Americans only get flu vaccines in single doses, free of a mercury-derived preservative called ‘thimerosal.’ Concerns around thimerosal are rooted in historic misinformation on a debunked link between vaccines and autism. Public health experts present at the conference also recognized this; Dr. Jason Goldman, head of the American College of Physicians, said during the public comments section of the conference, “Many statements have been made [here] today without support of science or evidence but merely opinion.”
Vaccine confidence in the U.S. has fallen since the pandemic — in large part thanks to the misinformation peddled by Kennedy Jr. and his ilk — and this is having a real impact on communal immunity for preventable diseases like measles. The percentage of US school-age children receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine fell from 95 percent in 2019 to 92 percent in 2023. Dr Robert H. Shmerling, a senior faculty editor at Harvard Health Publishing, wrote recently that the 92 percent figure is below the standard required to protect individuals and their communities from measles.
RFK has repeatedly undermined the MMR vaccine. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity in March, RFK falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine led to “deaths every year” and spread misinformation about how quickly the protection from the vaccine fades. Only a few weeks later, a second child died in Texas after contracting measles. This prompted RFK to issue an overdue corrective: “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” As Texas officials declared the outbreak in Texas over in late August, Jennifer Nuzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, said that the outbreak was controlled “despite” RFK.
From flu season to containing a measles outbreak, RFK has proven himself utterly unfit to lead the department tasked with offering Americans safe and transparent advice on vaccinations. RFK and his unqualified ACIP will continue to put their own ideology above the vast scientific consensus. It is well past time for the adults to be brought back to the Department of Health and Human Services; may RFK’s tenure be as short as his presidential campaign.
