RFK Jr.’s Deadly War on Science

During an NBC interview on November 6, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was cleaning up his lifelong anti-vaccination act as he lobbied to become Health and Human Services secretary in the Trump administration.

“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away,” he said. “People ought to have choice…”

Kennedy is not a doctor or a scientist, but he got the job as America’s top public health officer. Now he’s making the wrong choices for all of us.

What Happened

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) report to Kennedy. As with flu shots, the agencies have approved and recommended Covid-19 vaccines as they have been adjusted annually to deal with the evolving virus.

On May 20, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, announced a new obstacle to FDA approval of any Covid-19 vaccine. For healthy Americans under 65, it must be subjected to large scale and time-consuming clinical trials. That data will replace the prior requirement of evidence showing only an immune response, which was the basis for approving the initial “Project Warp Speed” vaccines and all subsequent boosters.

Makary and Prasad asserted that they’re merely requiring “gold-standard data on persons at low risk.” But by not requiring such randomized, placebo-controlled trials for the elderly and other high-risk groups, they’re conceding that the vaccine prevents infection.

Even trying to follow the new requirement poses problems. It’s unethical to perform a clinical study that would give some people a worthless placebo instead of a vaccine, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the University of Pennsylvania:

[W]e have a vaccine that works, given that we know that SARS-CoV2 continues to circulate and cause hospitalizations and death, and there’s no group that has no risk.

What Should Have Happened

Every year, the Advisory Committee on Immunizaton Practices to the CDC—a nonpartisan group of medical and scientific experts—considers the latest studies, data, and possible side effects of both old and new vaccines. It develops recommendations that the CDC’s director can accept, modify, or reject.

The transparent process culminates in a schedule that pediatricians throughout the country use to decide the safest and most effective ages at which to vaccinate children. Insurance companies use the CDC schedule to determine the vaccines they will cover.

Kennedy didn’t wait for the Advisory Committee. Three days after the FDA’s announcement of its new approval requirement, Kennedy posted a video on X, with Commissioner Makary at his side:

I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.

The blowback from the medical community was immediate. Every week in the United States, Covid-19 still kills 300 people and hundreds more are hospitalized. It’s the fourth leading cause of death overall and in the top 10 among children. And a new strain surging in Asia has now arrived here.

On May 30, the CDC walked back Kennedy’s proclamation with an update: For children between six months and 17 years old, the CDC now recommends “shared decision-making” between the physician and the patient or patient and guardian in determining whether to get the vaccine.

Healthy adults are still off the CDC’s list. And for pregnant women—all of whom are at greater risk of Covid-19 complications—the CDC’s positions are internally contradictory. Its new schedule no longer recommends that they get vaccinated. But the CDC continues to recommend the vaccine to anyone with “underlying conditions”—one of which is pregnancy. Meanwhile newborns who depend on their vaccinated mothers for immunity have the same likelihood of hospitalization and death from Covid-19 as someone who is 70 years old.

What Happens When Republicans Fear Trump More Than Endangering Public Health

Exhaustive studies have demonstrated that the vaccine is effective across all age groups. According to data published by the National Institutes of Health—another agency that Kennedy supervises—it has prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved millions of lives.

During Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked Kennedy to acknowledge that the Covid-19 vaccine had saved millions of people.

“I don’t think anybody can say that,” Kennedy replied.

Now, as with many Trump policies, the cost of a Covid-19 vaccine will hit hardest those adults who can least afford it. But when they don’t get vaccinated, the public at large will bear the consequences.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. But he overcame those reservations, perhaps because Republican primary challengers on the right were already telling Louisiana voters in the upcoming election that Cassidy was insufficiently loyal to Trump. After voting to convict Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection, the Louisiana Republican Party’s executive committee censured him.

Cassidy said that he voted to confirm Kennedy only after “intense conversations” that included Kennedy’s promise to “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ recommendations without changes.”

Until Kennedy broke that promise, the decision to get a Covid-19 vaccine was an individual choice. To promote public health, the vaccine’s presence on the CDC’s guidance schedule assured that it would be free to those who wanted it.

Now, as with many Trump policies, the cost of a Covid-19 vaccine will hit hardest those adults who can least afford it. But when they don’t get vaccinated, the public at large will bear the consequences: More Americans will be hospitalized with Covid-19 and more will die.

Blame Kennedy, of course, but he is who he always has been. Trump and Senate Republicans—especially Sen. Cassidy—knew it when they gave him the job that is killing us.