Kennedy’s Anti-Vaccine Strategy Risks Forcing Shots Off Market, Manufacturers Warn
By dinner under palm trees on a terrace in Mar-A-Lago in December, the president elected Donald Trump reassured the heads of the Directorate of Pharmaceuticals Eli Lilly and Pfizer that the anti-Vaccin activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would not be a radical choice to lead the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
“I think it will be much less radical than you think,” Trump said later this month at a press conference at his Palm Beach, Florida, Resort.
Eight months have passed and Kennedy intensifies his attacks against the vaccination system.
At the top of its list of objectives: a federal vaccine compensation program which regulates injury complaints. Its strategy could bankrupt or decrease the fund, according to some legal researchers and public health leaders, pharmaceutical companies with risks and costs of responsibility which would force them to completely cease vaccines.
“It’s a radical program,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist to organize vaccines and infectious diseases at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “He uses a lot of different mechanisms and there is really no railing. People will reproduce, but that will not be enough to stop the waves of death and the death of children.”
Kennedy said that changes to the American vaccination system are necessary because, he claims without proof, vaccinations are linked to autism, neurotoxicity, allergies and death. He is a leader in the movement “Make America Healthy Again”, an informal campaign that avoids traditional medicine and marries “medical freedom”. Many followers oppose vaccines and believe that they are not sure despite scientific evidence of the contrary.
Kennedy admitted that he wanted to reform the vaccination fund, known as the vaccination injury remuneration program, writing on July 28 on the social platform X that “the VICP is broken, and I intend to repair it”. HHS works with the Ministry of Justice to reorganize the program, which protects drug manufacturers from most responsibilities for injuries.
HHS did not respond to a request to speak with Kennedy, but the agency officials said that he was not opposed to vaccinations.
“Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine-he is pro-security, pro-transparency and pro-accountability,” said HHS spokesperson Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, in an email.
However, behind the scenes, Kennedy laid the foundations to restrict the availability of widely used vaccinations, according to people familiar with internal discussions who have asked not to be identified because they are not allowed to speak on the subject.
A several -strict strategy
The strategy began to take shape in the spring. The first step: raises questions not based on vaccine safety. At a meeting of the cabinet in April, Kennedy told Trump that HHS undertook a massive study that would identify the cause of the increase in autism diagnoses by September.
Kennedy instructed David Geier, a researcher who repeated the demystified assertion that vaccines cause autism, to supervise work, according to the media.
Kennedy then doubled by questioning the use of aluminum, which is added to many vaccines to help stimulate the immune response. He linked it to allergies at a meeting of governors in July, even if a recent study in the annals of internal medicine found no link. He is widely supposed to ask a federal vaccination advisory committee to examine.
Autism research and aluminum concerns were the first Salvos in the push to continue the remuneration fund, according to two of the people.
This fund has provided money for people for vaccine injuries and has paid more than $ 5 billion since its creation in 1988, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Before submitting legal action before the courts, the wounded brought their requests to the vaccination court against the program jury, which examines the evidence. The fund provides remuneration from a small excise tax on vaccines.
The compensation is determined in part by a table maintained by HRSA and supervised by the secretary of the HHS. It lists each vaccine and associated injuries and includes routine vaccinations recommended by the centers for Disease Control and Prevention which are subject to the excise tax. Injuries include anaphylaxis and encephalitis. People who have such injuries in a certain time after obtaining a specific vaccine can get money.
Kennedy wants to add autism or allergies to this document, according to two familiar people with internal discussions and concerns raised publicly by certain vaccine developers and former regulators. It could achieve the objective if the research led by HHS blames vaccines for autism, for example, or if a federal vaccine consulting committee recommends against aluminum in vaccines, according to some legal researchers.
“Given the autism rate, if many cases are brought, this could take charge of the program,” said Dorit Reiss, professor at the University of California San Francisco.
If this were to happen, pharmaceutical companies could stop producing vaccinations, which do not tend to be very profitable, rather than putting yourself in reactive and costly proceedings of applicants who cannot obtain money because the Federal Vaccine Fund Fund has been dry, said legal experts and vaccine promoters.
“The remuneration fund, if it left, would have an impact on the decisions of proceeding or not to continue,” said David Dodd, president and chief executive officer of Geovax Labs, a biotechnology company developing vaccines and immunotherapy.
A federal vaccination consulting committee could also recommend against aluminum in shots, forcing drug manufacturers to make expensive reforms or to leave the market.
Kennedy has placed people around him to perform the strategy. He pushed to obtain skeptics from vaccines in decision -making positions at the CDC, which recommends vaccines, and the Food and Drug Administration, which approves them.
He also typed leaders of the anti-vaccine movement to tell him about his candidates.
The result was the regulations and political decisions that have taken access and the development of vaccines.
The HHS said this month, interrupted $ 500 million in grants and contracts for the development of mRNA vaccines, including an improved and more sustainable COVvin mRNM vaccine.
The federal government has ceased to recommend coupons with co -via women and healthy pregnant children, bypassing the comments of an advisory committee against vaccines that would have traditionally weighed.
And Kennedy has reconstructed this committee with its own component members, including the skeptics of the vaccines, and abolished the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association and other industrial groups which served as committee links. The modified panel has recommended against influenza vaccines containing a preservative mistakenly linked to autism.
The White House calls
Kennedy’s determination to maintain skeptics of vaccines in the surveillance posts concluded in an agreement he recently concluded with Trump and his staff, according to two familiar people with the situation. The arrangement met on a Sunday evening in July when Kennedy received a call from the White House.
The subject was Vinay Prasad, a vaccine regulator greater than the FDA. He had recently addressed a wave of industry criticisms for playing a role in the agency’s decision to ask the Biotechnology company Sarepta Therapeutics to stop the expeditions of gene therapy on security problems.
Publications on social networks and conservative commentators have whipped a fury. Laura Loomer, an extreme right provocateur, said on July 21 on X that Prasad should be dismissed and called him “a self-proclaimed fanboy of Liberal and Bernie Sanders”, referring to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT.). Congress legislators began to pivot the White House with questions.
The fury reached Trump, who wanted Prasad to come out, according to the people. But Kennedy was concerned about the loss of Prasad. He estimated that he needed a criticism of vaccinations supervising vaccines at the agency.
Kennedy therefore concluded an agreement. Prasad would be invited to resign at the head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the FDA, which regulates vaccine and biological products such as genetic therapies. And the center would be divided into two operations, Kennedy authorized to select the supervising vaccines.
Some public health leaders have publicly shared the details of the arrangement and raised concerns about its potential impact. Former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, said in an interview on August 1 on CNBC that he thought that “would be very destructive for the agency”.
After leaving the agency in July, Prasad returns now, although it is not clear if its role has changed.
Recently, Kennedy was continued by Ray Flores, principal external lawyer for the defense of children’s health. An anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, the defense of children’s health finances the prosecution, which claims that Kennedy failed to launch a working group to study the safety of vaccines which, according to him, is required to report the results in the Congress. But Kennedy and his allies consider the trial as friendly, according to a person familiar with the question, because she is looking for a result he wants.
HHS, August 14, announced that it was relan a federal panel, dissolved in 1998, to provide monitoring of pediatric vaccines.
Kennedy’s work against vaccines also sparked hostile proceedings, including one, including one American Academy of Pediatrics and other public health groups. His recent decision to arrest funds for the development of mRNA vaccines has led to swelling criticism on social networks.
“It is reckless. It is dangerous. It will cost lives. We must fight back,” said senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) On August 5 on X.
“I tried to be objective and not alarmist in response to the current HHS actions – but frankly, this decision will cost lives,” said Jerome Adams, who was an American general surgeon during the previous Trump administration, said on August 5 on the same platform.
Kennedy and his donors remain unbeatéed. In a counterpunch, his supporters launched an unprecedented public relations campaign to promote the HHS secretary, stimulating speculation that he could reflect on a presidential race in 2028.
The MAHA action non -profit held in July to boost Kennedy’s supporters and launched a six -digit advertising campaign praising the health initiatives of the Kennedy and Trump administration.
“Make no mistake, it is a revolution that will change the face of public health policy,” said Tony Lyons, president of Maha Action, in a statement. “Americans demand radical transparency and the science of gold standards.”
Kff Health News is a national editorial hall that produces in -depth journalism on health issues and is one of the main KFF operating programs – an independent source of independent research, survey and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Use our contents
This story can be republished for free (details).
