If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is confirmed as the HHS secretary, he will have broad influence over the future course of U.S. healthcare, especially public health. Interest in his nomination would be high regardless but it is sky-high because of his views on vaccines and his family name.
The Senate Committee on Finance is scheduled to hold a hearing today starting at 10 a.m. to consider Kennedy’s appointment. The committee is chaired by Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, and Sen. Ron Wyden is the highest ranking Democrat. A second hearing to consider Kennedy’s nomination is scheduled for tomorrow, also at 10 a.m., before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican chairs hat committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, is the ranking member.
The 71-year-old Kennedy family scion started his career as an environmental attorney. But more recently, his public profile has been largely as a vaccine skeptic whose views many public health officials and experts say are dangerous because they erode trust in vaccines and therefore increase the risk of potentially lethal infectious diseases. Kennedy has been mostly quiet about his stance about vaccines since President Donald Trump nominated him to head HHS in November as he has shifted to his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign that prioritizes healthy eating and efforts to reduce chronic disease, particularly among children.
In a letter to the Office of Government Ethics, Kennedy has said he resigned from his position of chairman of the Children’s Health Defense, an organization that he founded that has questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Until December 2024, he was a salaried attorney with J W. Howard Attorneys, and if confirmed Kennedy will resign position at J. W .Howard, as well as with other law firms that he is associated with.
Kennedy and Republicans may want to put the focus on MAHA. But his views on vaccines and public health will likely be at the center of questioning today, especially from Democrats. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, sent Kennedy a 34-page, footnoted letter to Kennedy outlining her questions. In that letter, Warren calls Kennedy’s views on vaccine safety and public health dangerous. She cites a May 2024 paper published in The Lancet that assessed the World Health Organization’s Expanded Program on Immunization. Researchers used statistical models to look at the impact of this program, which began in 1974. They found that vaccination efforts avoided 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years. They estimated that vaccination has accounted for 40% decline in global infant mortality.
Warren indicates that she has concerns about his ability to lead HHS, pointing to his work with the Children’s Health Defense. She called him the face of organization, which she said has disregarded scientific process and spread false information about vaccines and autism and about the COVID-19 vaccines.
In December 2024, for example, the Children’s Health Defense published a paper that suggests that women who have been vaccinated for COVID-19 were found to have menstrual abnormalities and suggested the abnormalities caused by the vaccines shedding the COVID-19 virus’ spike protein. But that is misleading and confuses the science. Messenger RNA-based vaccines only contain the genetic material of the COVID-19 virus, not the actual virus. There is no “shedding” of the virus.
Myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, has been seen as a rare side effect in adolescents after vaccination, according to a study published in January 2023 in Circulation. The analysis of 16 patients at the Massachusetts General for Children or Boston Children’s Hospital found that spike proteins may contribute to myocarditis. But in the case mRNA vaccines, the spike proteins are created by our cells from virus’s genetic material to help the immune address COVID-19.
Kennedy has said he does not want to take away vaccines but, rather, require they be properly tested. He has also framed vaccination as an issue that should be a matter of choice. For example, in October 2024, he posted a clip to X from an interview where he said that if people want vaccines they should have access, but they should know the safety and risk profile, as well as the efficacy of that vaccine.
In September 2024, Kennedy posted on X a link to the Children’s Health Defense aims to protect children from “toxic exposure” including from vaccines. In the post, he claimed that the CDC recommendation for three COVID-19 vaccines for babies up to 9 months is unsafe and ineffective. He said in his post that babies are a near-zero risk for COVID-19.
But Kennedy’s post about CDC’s recommendation is misleading. The CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccination for children beginning at 6 months to 4 years of age with two doses of the Moderna vaccine and three doses of the Pfizer vaccines, but the doses are smaller than for adults
As a presidential candidate in August 2024, he posted a video to X where he indicated that his views on vaccines have been misinterpreted. He laid out his views on vaccines in this video, where he went on to read the side effects listed in the package insert for Energix-B, which is given to newborns to prevent infection with hepatitis B.
Severe allergic reactions from vaccines, however, are rare — about one or two cases for every 1 million vaccinations, according to HHS. And the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program provides compensation to those who have been injured, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration, which is part of HHS. Kennedy has said he would like to see the vaccine injury program repealed and for pharmaceutical manufacturers to be held more accountable.
Kennedy also claimed in this video that vaccines have not been studied extensively, but vaccines undergo development in a process similar to that of drugs and biologics, being tested first in animals and then through clinical and post-approval trials.
Kennedy also included a clip from a 20 year-old interview with Bernadine Healy, the National Institutes of Health director from 1991 to 1993. In that video clip. Healy talks about the need to study vaccines and autism. What neither Healy or Kennedy say is that Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study that found a link between vaccine and autism was flawed because of misconduct. The Lancet later retracted the study. In the ensuing years, many studies have been done that could not corroborate this link to autism. The Washington Post published a review of Kennedy’s public statements yesterday that the newspaper says identified at least 36 appearances when he linked vaccines to autism.
Kennedy also said that the right to freedom means that people have the right to choose and said that former President Joseph Biden violated that principal with mandated COVID-19 vaccines. But public health and safety requires herd immunity from vaccines to eliminate disease and keep serious infection from spreading. Smallpox, for example, has been eliminated because of routine vaccination.