To find any information about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccination policy on his Make America Healthy Again website, you must first scroll through the sections asking for donations, official MAHA merchandise, and an ad offering the opportunity to ” secure the place”. ” on a tile in a mosaic of Trump and RFK Jr. shaking hands Only then, after clicking through eight pages of videos, will you find a titled video “My side about vaccines.” The 31-second clip offers a one-sentence explanation, lacking in detail but saying enough to cast doubt on decades of vaccine research, development and testing: “If you want a vaccine, you should be able to get one vaccine, but you should know the safety profile and the risk profile of that vaccine and the effectiveness of that vaccine — and that’s it.”

Kennedy, Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has long been vocal in the anti-vaxxer movement—yet vaccine reform it was not a centerpiece of Kennedy’s run to the White House, nor was he in MAHA’s ongoing campaign. In June 2023, two months after launching his candidacy for the presidency, Kennedy he told NBC News“If anyone wants to talk to me about vaccinesI will talk to them. But it’s not a problem I’m running with.”

Recently, when answering questions about vaccines, Kennedy claimed that it was “he was never anti-vaccine.” But less than 18 months ago, in July 2023, he said podcaster Lex Fridman that “there is no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” This blatant backtrack is also hard to believe coming from president on leave of Protecting children’s health (CHD), the largest anti-vaccine organization in the country, which also happens to have a history of circulating misleading claims. In fact, a study 2021 of verified Twitter accounts found Kennedy’s personal account to be the top “spreader” of vaccine misinformation on the platform, responsible for more than 13 percent of all retweets of misinformation.

Now that he can join the second Trump Administration, the conspiracy theorist and CHD founder wouldn’t just be able to oversee the department. The $1.7 trillion budgetbut it is 13 operational divisions also including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

While Kennedy’s typical anti-vaccine messaging was noticeably absent on the campaign trail, it has returned since joining Trump, albeit in a different, unexpected form: milquetoast statements about vaccines and research that almost anyone would agree with , regardless of their politics. affiliation. While this bizarre doublespeak seems reasonable on the surface, in reality it undermines public health and endangers the country’s future.

Hiding in language

Some of Kennedy’s most detailed policy proposals to date came in a September op-ed for the Wall Street Journala month after throwing his support behind Trump. The piece described a number of goals he hoped to achieve if he became part of the administration, such as allocating half of NIH research budgets to “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health”; banning the use of food stamps to buy soda or processed foods; and the reintroduction of the Presidential Fitness Test. But he didn’t mention vaccines.

The day after the election, Trump delivered three tasks Kennedy: “Clean up corruption” in government agencies, “return” to evidence-based science, and end chronic disease. Vaccine reform was conspicuously absent from this list.

Another way Kennedy questions the safety and effectiveness of existing vaccines is by questioning the science behind their research, development and testing. This sneak attack may sound very similar to the second point of Trump’s agenda: “Returning (to) evidence-based, gold-standard science.” But this is the type of research that the NIH, CDC, and FDA have been conducting all along.

Calling for empirical research that tests the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, Kennedy suggests that is currently lacking at these agencies. Other times, he opts for a more obvious attack, as in a November 6 interview with NPR, when he said that “the science of vaccine safety in particular has huge gaps, and we’re going to make sure those scientific studies are done.” Or in June 2023when he claimed that “vaccines are not tested for safety” and that none of the vaccines recommended for American children “have ever undergone a pre-authorization placebo-controlled trial.”

Getting to the truth

This tactic does not sit well Wilbur Chen, MDphysician-scientist in infectious diseases, professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and former member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

“Kennedy asks, ‘Do we really have safety information (on vaccines)?’ Yes, we do,” he says Rolling Stone. “But now people are saying, ‘Oh, well, vaccines aren’t safe, maybe.’ So it doesn’t matter if it’s based on facts or not – just the fact that you’re asking that question already raises doubts in some people’s minds, and that’s already harmful.”

To be clear, rigorous vaccine safety testing is already taking place, FDA spokeswoman Cherie Duvall-Jones said. Rolling Stone. All vaccines licensed in the United States are “backed by well-controlled clinical trials that have established their safety and efficacy,” she says, noting that the FDA continues to monitor their safety after they are marketed.

As for the question of whether children’s vaccines get placebo-controlled trials, there may be a very good reason for that: when vaccines are being developed, clinical trials usually include a control group of people who can receive a FDA-approved vaccine, a placebo control, or another control — such as inactive ingredients in the vaccine, Duvall-Jones explains. People in the study who received the vaccine are compared with people in the control group to assess the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines and to keep track of possible side effects.

However, “a placebo control is not always necessary to determine the safety or efficacy of a vaccine,” explains Duvall-Jones. “In some cases, the inclusion of placebo control groups is considered unethical.” This may be the case if a proven vaccine or treatment exists but is denied to participants, putting their health at risk.

To ask questions

In addition to calling for empirical research and vaccine safety testing, both of which are standard practice, Kennedy also emphasizes the importance of making “informed choices” about vaccines. “It implies that doctors and providers haven’t had these discussions with patients over the decades, and it suggests that somehow the information has been withheld,” says Chen.

It also undermines existing school vaccine mandates, suggesting that parents who follow them are not making informed decisions about their children’s health. “We still have general confidence in the CDC and the FDA, and I think if the institutions give any question or reason for pause, you might have more reluctance to vaccinate among parents and children,” says Howard P. Forman, MDprofessor of radiology and public health as well as director of the healthcare management program at the Yale School of Public Health.

By the same token, when Kennedy uses this language of informed decision-making, it is often accompanied by claims that vaccine test data is being suppressed. “People should have a choice, and that choice should be based on the best information.” he told NBC News on November 6. “So I’m going to make sure that the scientific safety studies and the efficacy studies are available, and people can make individual assessments of whether that product is going to be good for them.” Kennedy also indicated that he would like to review vaccine safety data so they can use it to take existing vaccines off the market. Fortunately for him, he doesn’t have to look far: scientific studies of safety and efficacy are published in peer-reviewed journals, and the data they provide are available TO public online.

But according Paul Offit, MDan infectious disease physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Kennedy’s requests for vaccine safety data are strategic.

“He believes—because he’s a conspiracy theorist—that everybody is deep in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry, and so he’s not telling you the real story,” Offit says. Rolling Stone. “And he says, ‘I’m going to make them show us the real data,’ as if things are hidden. Nothing is hidden. But his point is that it’s hidden and “Only I know the truth – you just have to trust me.”

Kennedy’s decades-long anti-vaccine stance appears to be based at least in part on a retracted and debunked 2005 article published by Rolling Stone and Salon arguing that vaccines containing thimerosal cause autism (claims who have since former crippled), and that there was a massive cover-up to hide these risks from the public. The withdrawal took place in 2011, shortly after THE 1998 study in The Lancet which first established the link between vaccines and autism was retracted by the journal and found to be fraudulent.

Since then, Kennedy, CHD and the rest of the anti-vaccine movement have broken the country’s confidence in vaccines – preying on parents in particular and telling them to “they have confidence in their own ability” to make decisions about their child’s health. In fact, they have already made progress in this area.

In October, the the CDC reported that during the 2023-2024 school year, 3.1 percent of kindergarten students had a non-medical exemption from at least one required vaccine — the highest rate ever — with some areas exceeding a five percent exemption rate . Nationally, kindergarten vaccination coverage is below 95 percent target for the fourth consecutive year. “That’s below herd immunity,” Offit says — meaning there’s more chance of infectious disease spreading through communities.

Yet, 205 children died from the flu during the 2023-2024 flu season, breaking last year’s record of 199 child deaths. In line with previous years, about 80 percent of children eligible for influenza vaccination (and whose vaccination status is known) were not fully vaccinated. The number the number of measles outbreaks and cases increased compared to last year, as did incidents in pertussis. It was a poliovirus outbreak in 2022, just north of New York City, which left an unvaccinated resident paralyzed.

“It’s already happening,” says Offit. “Giving a platform only makes it worse.”