RFK Jr. orders sweeping review of vaccines and antidepressants
A month ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat before a Senate hearing committee and declared, “I support vaccines. I support the vaccine schedule. I support good science.”
But this week, Kennedy struck a markedly different tone. His first act as Health Secretary was to announce an investigation whether childhood vaccinations might be linked to chronic diseases.
“We will convene representatives of all viewpoints to study the causes for the drastic rise in chronic disease,” Kennedy told the assembled workers at HHS headquarters on Tuesday.
“Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized.”
Kennedy made it clear he planned to redirect the agency’s vast resources toward questioning long-established medical consensus, noting that “nothing is going to be off limits.”
His investigation plans go beyond just vaccines and antidepressants.
Kennedy listed several other things as possible causes of chronic diseases such as radiation from electronic devices, farming chemicals, processed foods, food allergies, tiny plastic particles in the environment, and chemicals used to make non-stick pans.
“Whatever belief or suspicion I have expressed in the past, I’m willing to subject them all to the scrutiny of unbiased science,” he said.
“That is going to be our template — unbiased science. That’s something that will make us all proud of this agency and of our role in restoring American health.”
However, public health experts warn there’s a big difference between studying new environmental threats and re-examining vaccines that we already know are safe.
“It’s very disturbing that someone who has spent so much of his career trying to undermine confidence in vaccines, trying to tear down the infrastructure that approves and recommends vaccines, has the potential to be in a position of power over the infrastructure that has those goals,” infectious disease specialist Adam Ratner tells NPR.
“It is much easier to scare people than to unscare them,” he says. “And I think that just by elevating anti-vaccine views in the guise of RFK, I think that we risk a crisis in vaccine confidence in the U.S.”
