RFK Jr.‘s Anti-Vaccine Agenda Jeopardizes Our Health

RFK Jr.‘s Anti-Vaccine Agenda Jeopardizes Our Health

In his seminal 2017 book, “The Death of Expertise,” Tom Nichols aptly described the societal trends that created the political opening for someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ascend to a top government post of great responsibility.  “The death of expertise is not just a rejection of existing knowledge," wrote Nichols. “It is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are the foundations of modern civilization.”

 

The completely predictable negative consequences of selecting one of the leading purveyors of misleading and sometimes outright false information about vaccines to oversee our nation’s health and human services agencies are becoming all too apparent.  As a long-time anti-vaccine advocate, RFK Jr. developed a well-earned reputation for substituting his gut beliefs about the dangers of vaccines and their relative ineffectiveness for well-established science demonstrating their safety and effectiveness. Mr. Kennedy repeatedly twisted facts and misrepresented studies in the service of his beliefs. Unfortunately, he is employing that exact same approach as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

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RFK Jr.'s strongly held view that vaccine guidelines and policies are best guided by his vaccine skepticism, no matter what the science and health care experts say, is at the heart of his decision to fire the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the resignations of three top health experts in its wake. CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired because she rejected Kennedy’s insistence that she rubber-stamp the vaccine decisions of an advisory board upon which he had removed the existing members who were selected for their expertise, replacing them with anti-vaccination allies.

 

The CDC director’s firing was preceded by an ill-advised and scientifically unsound decision to restrict access to COVID boosters despite a rise in cases in advance of the usual fall/winter increase in respiratory illnesses and the spread of the new Stratus variant. COVID boosters will now only be routinely available for people ages 65 and older and people between the ages of 5 and 64 with an underlying condition that would make them more likely to have severe outcomes from contracting the illness. Pointing out that COVID cases still can have severe consequences, such as long COVID, are occasionally deadly, and the disease remains highly contagious, the American Academy of Pediatrics and most other health experts opposed the decision.

 

 Additionally, practically ensuring that we will be less prepared for future pandemics, RFK Jr. cancelled more than $1 billion in vaccine research and development: $600 million for the development of a bird flu vaccine and $500 million for the development of various mRNA vaccines. Mr. Kennedy Jr. is acting on his evidence-free belief that mRNA vaccines are unsafe.  

 

Under his leadership, the United States is also dramatically curbing its financial and logistical support for international vaccine efforts in developing countries that have saved millions of lives.   This includes a large scale back in “support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally,” reported The New York Times.

As damaging as RFK Jr's policy retreat on vaccines is his use of the bully pulpit that comes with his prominent cabinet post to champion vaccine skepticism. He has downplayed the efficacy of the measles vaccine, questioned the effectiveness of the polio vaccine, and advanced misinformation on the composition of vaccines, among other fact-free claims.  Additionally, he is using government resources to relitigate the thoroughly debunked claim he championed as an anti-vaccine advocate, linking vaccines and autism. 

 

This will all contribute to stepped-up vaccine hesitancy in segments of the American public, a reluctance that is just about certain to result in the otherwise avoidable spread of communicable diseases, as well as resulting hospitalizations and deaths.  During the first 11 months or so after COVID vaccines became widely available, for example, about 60% of the deaths in the United States -- 234,000 altogether- could have been prevented if all adults had gotten fully vaccinated, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.

 

In a scathing opinion piece posted in yesterday’s New York Times, eight former CDC Directors, including those who served under Democratic and Republican presidents, plainly stated that “Kennedy is endangering every American’s health.” It is time for Senator Bill Cassidy(R-LA)--who, despite his reservations, cast a deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr.--to deliver on the aggressive oversight he promised and for other Republican leaders to put pressure on the White House to rein in the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I am not holding my breath, but President Trump should take a hard look at the impact of his ill-advised decision to give RFK Jr. this job, and in Mr. Trump’s own words, “empower him to go wild.”

 

Without a major course correction, Americans will pay a high price in avoidable disease, health care costs, hospitalizations, and deaths.