During his Senate confirmation hearings to be Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. showed up as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken large -scale measures, sometimes thin to undermine trust in the effectiveness and safety of vaccines.
The National Institutes of Health has interrupted the funding for researchers who study the hesitation of the vaccine and hoped to find a way to overcome it. He also canceled the programs destined to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics.
The centers for the control and prevention of diseases have set aside an advertising campaign for the flu. Kennedy said in an incorrect way that scientists who recommend the CDC on vaccines have “serious and serious conflicts of interest” in promoting products and you cannot trust.
The Department of Health and Human Services It cuts billions of dollars to state health agencies, including the funds necessary to modernize state programs for childhood immunization. Kennedy said in a television interview on Wednesday not to be aware of this widely reported development.
The Food and Drug Administration has canceled an open meeting on flu vaccines with scientific consultants, keeping it up to the closed doors. A high official paused the revision of the Covavax Covavax vaccine agency. In a television interview last week, Kennedy falsely said that the vaccines created in the same way do not work against respiratory viruses.
Some scientists said they saw a scheme: an effort to erode the support for routine vaccination and for scientists who have held him for a long time as a public health objective.
“This is a simultaneous process to increase the probability that you listen to his voice and decrease the probability that you will listen to other rumors,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Anngenberg Public Policy Center, from Kennedy.
He is “decorating other voices of authority,” he said.
HHS did not agree that Mr. Kennedy was working against vaccines.
“Secretary Kennedy is not anti-Vaccino; it is pro-Siciness,” said Andrew Nixon, spokesman for the department, in a note. “His goal has always been to ensure that vaccines are strictly tested for effectiveness and safety.”
The declaration continued: “We are taking measures so that the Americans obtain the transparency they deserve and can make informed decisions on their health”.
After participating in the funeral of an unvaccinated child who died of measles in western Texas on Sunday, Kennedy approved the vaccine against measles on X as “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles”.
But it also described vaccination as a personal choice with scarcely understood risks and suggested that miraculous treatments were promptly available. On Sunday he praised two local doctors on social media who promoted dubious treatments, potentially harmful, for measles.
Even if the cases of measles in the United States increased on 600 in 22 jurisdictions, Kennedy said in a recent interview that the measles vaccine causes deaths every year (false); which causes encephalitis, blindness and “all diseases that the measles itself” (false); And that the effect of the vaccine decreases so dramatically that the oldest adults are “essentially not vaccinated” (false).
According to an e -mail obtained from the New York Times, HHS intends to review its web pages to include declarations such as “the decision to vaccinate is personal” and “people should also be informed about potential adverse events associated with vaccines”. (Vaccines are already administered only after patients have provided informed consent, as required by law.)
Tensions with traditional experts became acute last week, when Dr. Peter Marks, the higher vaccine regulator, resigned under pressure from the FDA
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather wants a subordinate confirmation of its disinformation and lies,” said dr. Marks in his resignation letter.
Mr. Kennedy’s position on vaccines launched alarm for decades. But now it has become particularly remarkable, in a background of growing vaccine skepticism And worsening morbillo outbreaks and bird’s influence, experts said.
The mmr-uno combined product to prevent measles, parotitis and rosolia which has been available since 1971-has long been a target of the anti-Vaccine campaigns due to the attenuated theory that can cause autism. Kennedy said he would like to revisit the problem, in part to relieve the fears of the parents that vaccines are not sure.
But he hired David Geier to review the data. Senator Bill Cassidy, republican of Louisiana, doctor and president of the Senate Health Committee, abruptly criticized the decision to spend dollars of taxes to test a discredited hypothesis even if the administration is cutting billions for other searches.
“If we’re pissed off the money here,” he said last month, “it’s less money that we really have to follow the real reason.”
The refusal to accept scientific consensus is “disturbing, because then we enter a very strange territory in which it is intuited of someone who does or does not happen, either works or does not work”, said Stephen Jameson, president of the American Association of Immunologist.
In the interviews, Kennedy has minimized the risks of measles and underlined what he sees as benefits of the infection.
“Everyone has obtained measles and measles gave you a protected protection for life against measles infection – the vaccine does not do it,” he said in an interview on Fox News.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine provide ten -year immunity. And while immunity from infection can last a lifetime, “people also suffer the consequences of that natural infection,” said dr. Jameson.
One consequence was discovered only a few years ago: a measles infection can destroy the memory of the immune system of other invading pathogens, leaving the body vulnerable to them again.
The measles kills about 1 in 1,000 infected people e 11 percent of those infected this year was hospitalized, many of which children under 5 years old, according to the CDC Two girls, 6 and 8 years old, died in Western Texas.
On the contrary, the side effects after vaccination are rare. But Mr. Kennedy suggested that people should inform the risks before opt for shooting.
The phrasing implies that “if you are more completely informed, you could make a different decision,” said dr. Jamieson, from the Annenberg Center.
The doctors had long expected health secretaries and the CDC to solicit the unequivocally widespread vaccination in the middle of a outbreak and in the past they have.
But Mr. Kennedy spoke with enthusiasm of the cod liver oil, a steroid and an antibiotic that are not standard therapies. Some of these treatments may make children sick.
“The messaging I am seeing is focused on potential measles treatments,” said dr. Sean O’Leary, president of the Infectious Diseases Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Closed doors
At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy promised that he would not change the CDCs Child vaccination program. About two weeks later, he announced a new commission that would have examined it.
The program is based on the recommendations of the advisory committee on immunization practices, a group of medical experts who examine safety and effectiveness data, potential interactions with other drugs and ideal times to maximize protection.
At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy said that 97 % of the ACIP members had conflicts of financial interest. He has long kept, without evidence, that federal regulators are compromised and hide information on the risks of vaccines.
“It’s frankly false,” said dr. O’Leary, which acts as a connection to the Pediatric Academy Committee.
Mr. Kennedy’s statistics came from a 2009 report that found that 97 percent of the dissemination modules had errors, such as missing dates or information in the wrong section.
In fact, the ACIP members are carefully subjected to screening for important conflicts of interest and cannot hold actions or serve in consultative consultants or offices for speakers affiliated to vaccine producers.
On the rare opportunity in which members have indirect conflicts of interest – for example, if an institution in which they work receives money from a drug manufacturer – reveal the conflict and go to the related votes.
The votes of the Committee were public and often strongly debated.
“When I was director of the CDC, people flew from Korea and all over the world to observe the ACIP meetings, because they were a model of transparency,” said dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who led the agency from 2009 to 2017.
Kennedy repeatedly promised greater transparency and responsibility, but proposed to end the public commentary on health policies.
His department canceled an ACIP meeting in February in which the members were destined to discuss vaccines for meningitis and influence, reprogramming it for April.
The Department also canceled a meeting to discuss the seasonal flu vaccine. The officials met later without the agency’s scientific consultants.
“After all that conversation on how they want to be transparent, one of the first things he does is bring things behind closed doors and decrease the amount of public inputs we are getting,” said dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy repeated a marginal theory that American blacks should not receive the same vaccines as others because “they have a much stronger reaction”.
Senator Angela Alsobrooks, Maryland’s Democratic, who is black, warned him for his “dangerous” opinion: “Your voice would be a voice that the parents would listen to”.
Two weeks later, in a clinic for adolescent mothers in Denver, a 19 -year -old woman refused all the vaccines for herself and her 1 year old son, including the measles and chickenpox shots that he should have had that day.
He told the pediatrician, Dr. Hana Smith, who described the accident, who had read online that the vaccines were bad for people with more melanin in their skin.
There are Risme of contrary evidence. However, he quickly became clear to Dr. Smith who would have changed his patient’s mind.
“It doesn’t matter how much information I can give on the contrary, the damage is already done,” said dr. Smith.
Disinformation is particularly difficult to contrast, Dr. Smith said: “When it is someone who has a leadership position, especially within the health system”.