RFK Hits Capitol Hill as Experts Warn His Anti-Vaccine Views Endanger Public Health
Health Systems 17/12/2024 •
Robert F Kennedy Jnr, Trump’s pick for US Health Secretary

Robert Kennedy Jr, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the United States health system, arrived in Washington, D. C. on Monday to rally support from lawmakers for his candidacy amid fears from health experts that the anti-vaccine activist and lawyer could roll back hard-won public health gains credited with saving millions of lives and protecting more from deadly disease.

Kennedy’s campaign on Capitol Hill kicks off following revelations last week by the New York Times that Aaron Siri, his lawyer on the campaign trail who is helping him vet picks for federal health officials at the Florida white house in Mar-a-Lago, petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.

The polio vaccine, first approved over 70 years ago, has protected hundreds of millions of people in the US and around the world from the deadly disease, which primarily affects children under five, attacking the nervous system and causing paralysis and death.

“RFK Jr has spent virtually his entire career casting doubt about vaccines. This is all part of a pattern that has gone on for a decade or more,” Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University, told Health Policy Watch. 

“Vaccines are among the most studied medical interventions, far safer than many medicines in people’s homes that they take regularly, such as ibuprofen.

“We need widespread vaccination coverage to protect everyone,” Gostin added.

Before the first poliovirus vaccine in 1955, children affected by polio depended on a mechanical respirator known as an “iron lung” for their survival as they had respiratory paralysis.

Prior to routine vaccinations in the 1960s, childhood illnesses like polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, mumps, and rubella killed and hospitalized hundreds of thousands of children annually in the US. The overwhelming success of vaccines has largely erased these memories, shifting public debate towards vaccine safety rather than the diseases they prevent. 

A reminder of how recent the dangers of polio are came from Senator Mitch McConnell, 82, who is a survivor of childhood polio, which he contracted at age two. As Kennedy hit Capitol Hill, the Republican Senate leader issued a sharp warning against any suggestion the polio vaccine’s approval should be questioned.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous,” McConnell said in a statement. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

Extensive testing of vaccines

The first polio vaccine, invented by Dr Jonas Salk in 1955, underwent extensive testing against placebos in nearly two million American children before its rollout. The modern-day vaccine, manufactured by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, did not undergo placebo trials but is very similar to the original Salk vaccine.

 Siri, Kennedy’s lawyer who has been involved in extensive efforts to fight vaccines of all kinds nationwide, pointed in his legal filings to this lack of a placebo control trial, arguing the vaccine should be suspended until this happens. 

That would mean depriving children of a vaccine that will protect them against a potential death, however, which the overwhelming majority of health experts consider unethical. Salk himself opposed the placebo trial conducted on his original vaccine for this same reason.

“Randomized control trials are unethical in the context of vaccines because vaccines are so effective – we can’t give a person a placebo knowing that he or she is susceptible to potentially serious or deadly infectious diseases,” Gostin said. “Since we know vaccines are highly protective, we can’t withhold the treatment.”

Sanofi notes that the vaccine has been used by nearly 300 million people worldwide. More than 300 studies, including trials with follow-up periods of up to six months, have been conducted since the vaccine’s development began in 1977.

“From the age of two, normal life without paralysis was only possible for me because of the miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love,” McConnell said. “But for millions who came after me, the real miracle was the saving power of the polio vaccine.”

Today, wild polio remains endemic in just two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Forty-six nations across Africa and the Asia Pacific are listed as outbreak countries by the Polio Eradication Initiative.

Global efforts led by the Rotary Club, the global vaccine platform Gavi, the Global Fund, the Gates Foundation and the Polio Eradication Initiative aim to eradicate polio. This would make it only the second disease ever to be fully eradicated after smallpox, considered the largest global health victory in history.

A health worker administers a polio vaccination in Pakistan’s northwestern region.

US childhood vaccination rates are falling

In statements to legacy media outlets, congress and cable networks, Kennedy has been careful to craft a moderate image on vaccines. Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for his office, said in response to the New York Times report on Siri’s efforts to revoke polio vaccine approval that Kennedy “has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice.”

Yet Kennedy and Siri are key players in a profitable industry of anti-vaccine activism that flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed over 1.2 million Americans. Their ascent coincides with reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of falling childhood vaccination rates for all available vaccines.

Earlier this year, measles outbreaks were reported in 15 US states, coinciding with the lowest child immunisation rates the country has seen in 10 years, according to the CDC.

Kennedy has repeatedly stated he believes vaccines cause autism and “neurodevelopmental disorders.” Asked whether he would support a move to end childhood vaccination programs if Kennedy passes the Senate, Donald Trump told Time magazine: “We’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at the things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”

Long anti-vax history

Kennedy was a key figure in the anti-vaccine world long before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world in 2019. 

He took over the flailing World Mercury Project in 2015, a non-profit named after the belief that mercury in vaccines causes autism in children. He rebranded the organisation as Children’s Health Defense (CHD) in 2018 and has shepherded it into a global anti-vaccine juggernaut.

CHD,  which Kennedy led until stepping down for his presidential run, is one of the top medical disinformation sites on the internet. This week, the most-read story on the Defender, CHD’s news arm, covers a study led by Peter McCollough, another leader in the anti-vaccine movement, who argues that COVID-19 vaccines should be suspended by the FDA. The study appears to be based on a misuse of VAERS, a federal database that records unverified reports of adverse events.

The “peer-reviewed study” is published in the misleadingly titled Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, the publication of a conservative non-profit that has also published studies on the “health benefits of firearms,” which calls gun research sponsored by the CDC “junk science.”

It has also published articles claiming that tobacco taxes and indoor smoking bans harm public health and that there are links between abortion and breast cancer. It is not listed in academic literature databases such as MEDLINE, PubMed or Web of Science.

CHD, whose revenue skyrocketed from $1.1 million in 2018 to $23.5 million in 2022, the last year for which tax disclosures are available, is part of a constellation of “medical freedom” groups that include the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), led by Kennedy’s presidential campaign’s director of communications, Del Bigtree. 

In 2022, ICAN paid Siri’s law firm $5.3 million for its legal efforts to fight vaccine approvals and mandates across the US, including polio and hepatitis B.

Kennedy made $510,000 in executive compensation for his role as director of CHD in 2022; ICAN paid out $880,000 in executive compensation from its $13.4 million in revenue that same year, public filings show.

“It’s difficult to understand the motivations behind RFK Jr and his organization and staff,” Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert, told Health Policy Watch.

“I could only speculate, and that wouldn’t be helpful, but I can say his anti-vaccine [stance] is very damaging for global public health,” added Hotez, who has an autistic child, has been introduced to Kennedy by colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in an attempt to persuade him that vaccines do not cause autism.

Kennedy has other fringe views including that AIDS is not caused by HIV, that antidepressants are responsible for mass school shootings, and that atrazine, a widely used herbicide, triggers gender dysphoria and has led to increases in young people identifying as transgender. 

https://x.com/PeterHotez/status/1868848477054419408

“Vaccines [are] our most impactful public health/scientific successes for the last 50 years, saving 154 million pediatric lives,” Hotez argues. “We also have overwhelming evidence for vaccine safety and knowledge vaccines don’t/cannot cause autism. I hope to say this every chance I get.”

Image Credits: Paul Palmer/ WHO, Pakistan Polio Eradication Program .

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