RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine appointees try to dismantle U.S. vaccine program
His latest appointee led an anti-vaccine group that compared the CDC’s work to Nazi propaganda.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has appointed a longtime ally and staunch anti-vaccine advocate to work in the vaccine safety office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where she will oversee much of the agency’s work assessing potential safety risks associated with vaccines. The move is just the latest in a series of major shakeups that threaten to set back U.S. vaccination efforts and leave us in a state of “vaccine chaos.”
Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner and former president of Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine organization that lists Kennedy as its founder and former chief counsel — has been tapped to lead the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, according to the Washington Post and CBS News. Her role will include overseeing the CDC’s analysis of vaccine safety data, as well as handling critical databases containing safety reports from the public and health care systems.
The controversial appointment comes just weeks after Kennedy ousted all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group of experts tasked with studying vaccines and providing recommendations to the CDC regarding childhood and adult immunizations.
Redwood has been an anti-vaccine advocate since 1999, when her daughter was diagnosed with autism. She has worked with several anti-vaccine groups, including serving as president of the World Mercury Project in 2016, which went on to become Children’s Health Defense in 2018. At that point, she took on the role of president of Children’s Health Defense, which is best known for spreading disinformation about vaccines and taking legal action to try to undo childhood immunization requirements.
The organization’s current content on its website and social media accounts includes conspiratorial videos about 5G, geoengineering, chemtrails, and more, as well as numerous testimonials from parents who say their children were injured by vaccines.
Ironically, the Immunization Safety Office over which Redwood will preside has previously come under harsh criticism from Children’s Health Defense, which compared the safety group’s work to Nazi propaganda and has accused it of manipulating and even destroying data, covering up whistleblower reports, giving false statements to the press about the safety of the COVID vaccine, manipulating public perceptions via disinformation campaigns about vaccines, lying about financial entanglements with the vaccine industry, and engaging in a “criminal coverup,” among other things.
On Thursday, Redwood participated in a meeting of the new vaccine advisory group made up of members handpicked by Kennedy himself. One of the major topics of discussion was thimerosal, an ingredient in some flu vaccines that anti-vaccine advocates have long blamed for causing health conditions including autism, despite extensive evidence disproving any connections between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental problems. (Moreover, no childhood immunizations in the U.S. contain thimerosal).
Even after decades of studying the preservative and not finding any evidence of serious health risks — and despite the fact that the chemical isn't even used in childhood vaccines anymore — anti-vaccine advocates still often use the controversy surrounding thimerosal as a way to scare people into believing that vaccines aren’t safe and to confuse people about what ingredients are actually in vaccines. As pharmacist and drug safety expert Terri Levien explains, “No evidence supports the idea that thimerosal, used as a preservative in vaccines, is unsafe or carries any health risks. In the human body, thimerosal is metabolized, or changed, to ethylmercury, an organic derivative of mercury [that is] quickly eliminated from the blood.” However, Levien added, “ethylmercury is sometimes confused with methylmercury, [which] is known to be toxic.”
Much of the panic over thimerosal can be attributed to disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield, who published falsified data in a study in the 1990s, claiming to have found a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. That study, of course, has since been retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license as a result of the scientific fraud he perpetrated, but the disinformation survived the controversy and still lives on today — so much so that it still influences vaccine policy.
“The more we see [Kennedy’s] agenda being put into action, the more it looks like Kennedy and his allies don’t actually want to improve the safety of vaccines — they just want to use the idea of unsafe vaccines to undermine public confidence and build support for the anti-vaccine movement.”
At Thursday’s meeting, the group of advisers chosen by Kennedy to develop national immunization guidance voted “to effectively remove [thimerosal] from flu shots, achieving a longtime, controversial goal of anti-vaccine activists and illustrating how their priorities are becoming official government guidance,” the Washington Post reported.
On the surface, removing a chemical from vaccines in order to conduct further research on its safety profile may sound reasonable — but in reality, it has already been studied thoroughly and rigorously since it first started being used in vaccines in the 1930s. Today, the remaining flu vaccines that still contain thimerosal are included in standard vaccine safety monitoring data, so any adverse events would have been evident by now. At this point, ordering further research is not a matter of being careful or diligent; rather, it’s an exercise in futility that simply takes money from other important health priorities and diverts it to an area of research that is already considered settled science. Relitigating public health issues and previous controversies is not an efficient or wise use of taxpayer dollars and is extremely unlikely to result in any improvements to child health or safety.
In fact, just the opposite is happening: On Wednesday, Kennedy announced that the US would be pulling out of a global vaccine alliance that funds vaccines in some of the poorest parts of the world and is credited with saving nearly 20 million lives since 2000. The announcement drew sharp criticism from public health experts like Dr. Atul Gawande Brigham and Young Hospital, who called the move “a travesty and a nightmare.”
Kennedy, of course, claims to be motivated by concerns about vaccine safety, but the more we see his agenda being put into action, the more it looks like Kennedy and his allies don’t actually want to improve the safety of vaccines — they just want to use the idea of unsafe vaccines to undermine public confidence and build support for the anti-vaccine movement.
After listening to this week’s rehashing of long-settled science, Dr. Sean O'Leary, who chairs the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said it’s clear that science wasn’t on the agenda.
“[T]his is an orchestrated effort to sow distrust in immunizations and the vaccine approval process,” he concluded.
With so much uncertainty and upheaval surrounding the committee, its members, and its recommendations, the U.S. could be thrust into a state of “vaccine chaos” warned Vanderbilt University infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner. The turmoil and confusion could mean that some vaccines will end up not being covered by insurance, while other vaccines could experience shortages if uncertainty about current guidance leads to changes in purchasing or delays in manufacturing and vaccine delivery.
But remember, this is all about vaccine safety — it surely has nothing to do with anti-vaccine activists in positions of power trying to unravel decades of science, paralyze our public health institutions, and rewrite history to align with their beliefs.
Surely.
Your delineation of the fallacious basis and malicious intent of RFK, Jr’s anti-vaccine initiatives is convincing if not exhaustive. What factors influence each of to adopt the perspectives we have is complex. I recall the transformation of RFK senior following his brother’s assassination. He became a champion for human and humane rights. RFK, Jr. disgraces his father’s legacy. Perhaps that is how his father’s assassination has warped his perspective. I voted for his father and believe America and the world would be better today had he lived. RFK,Jr’s actions are inexcusably inhumane.
There is a large body of peer- reviewed scientific literature that demonstrates the safety of the MMR and other vaccines. The work by Wakefield and others , suggesting a link between the MMR with autism has been discredited. There is no scientific evidence to support this false claim. Childhood vaccines save many lives and have been proven to be safe.
Thank you for your presentation of the facts about the anti-vaccine proponents. We owe it to our children to protect them from dangerous childhood illnesses.