RFK Jr. Has Already Broken His Vaccine Promise
Source: The Atlantic
RFK Jr. Has Already Broken His Vaccine Promise
Nicholas Florko
Fri, March 14, 2025 at 10:36 AM EDT 5 min read
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Weldon has denied that he’s anti-vaccination, but his views on vaccines seem to have been his undoing. In a written statement he gave to me and other outlets, he suggested that at least two Republican senators were threatening to vote against him, and that this became “clearly too much for the White House.” But those two senators, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine, voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an ardent vaccine critic who would have been Weldon’s boss as health secretary. Perhaps Weldon’s biggest problem was that he said the quiet part out loud. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy sidestepped calls for him to declare unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism, and appeared to convince lawmakers that he’d let Americans make their own decisions about vaccines. “I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines,” Kennedy told senators.
Kennedy is already breaking that promise. As cases of measles are popping up in states across the country—leading to America’s first measles death in a decade—he has propped up unproven treatments such as cod-liver oil. Though Kennedy has said that the measles vaccine helps “protect individual children from measles” and contributes to “community immunity,” he also baselessly questioned its “risk profile” in an appearance on Fox News earlier this week. (In extremely rare instances the vaccine can have serious side effects.) Kennedy’s subversion of vaccines, subtle at times, glaring at others, goes far beyond the measles outbreak. The health secretary is “using the federal government to undermine vaccination in all the ways that it can,” Matt Motta, a vaccine-communication researcher at Boston University, told me. Weldon may have crossed a red line for lawmakers. But in just over a month on the job, Kennedy has taken more steps against vaccines than perhaps any other top health official in modern American history.
Kennedy’s wishy-washy comments about the measles vaccine may persuade more parents not to vaccinate their children—which means that more children will get sick, and perhaps die. But his other actions will have an even broader, longer-lasting effect on the overall U.S. vaccination system. Earlier this week, the administration terminated NIH research grants probing how the government can address vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine promotion might seem separate from access, but the two are intertwined, Motta said. Research into vaccine promotion often explores issues such as whether people know where to get shots or whether insurance will cover them. (A spokesperson for Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.)
All the while, the research that the government now is funding may only serve to further sow vaccine distrust. ...
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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/quiet-assault-vaccines-143600999.html