Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the inaugural Make America Healthy Again summit in Washington earlier this month.Rod Lamkey/The Associated Press
Sometime, in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to look back and wonder: Whatever happened to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at one time the single most powerful and influential public-health agency on Earth?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which oversees the CDC), and a fervent anti-vaccine activist, seems hell-bent on using his position to destroy the CDC.
Last week, in his latest salvo, Mr. Kennedy personally instructed the agency to change its long-standing position that vaccines do not cause autism.
Before the update, the CDC website said studies have shown that there is “no link” between vaccines and developing autism, and that “no links” have been found between any vaccine ingredients and the disorder.
The page now says that studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism “have been ignored by health authorities.”
Then it adds: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
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This is preposterous, and doubly so because the change was ordered by a politician with no training in science, medicine or public health.
What Mr. Kennedy does have is a long-standing animus toward vaccination, and he has now co-opted and weaponized a powerful public-health agency toward his cause. The Health Secretary’s claims are false, misleading and harmful.
Mr. Kennedy faux-innocently says he is not saying vaccines cause autism, just that studies have not shown that they can’t.
But he knows full well that a negative cannot be proven. As Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University, said to The New York Times: “You can’t prove that Coca-Cola doesn’t cause autism either.”
Research has shown quite clearly that there is no link between measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination and autism. Those studies were made necessary by explosive claims in a paper published by Andrew Wakefield – a paper that was later withdrawn because the findings were manipulated. But not before terrible damage was done.
Mr. Kennedy and his ilk are now “wondering” about another routine childhood vaccine for DTaP – a combination shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough) in young children.
And, every now and again, he just tosses out weird new theories, like autism is caused by pregnant women taking Tylenol. Sorry, that should read: You can’t prove it doesn’t.
These are the common tactics of anti-vaxxers and other embracers of anti-science: Keep moving the goal posts, and then claim you’re “only asking questions.”
Mr. Kennedy’s goal is clear: To foment confusion and distrust in vaccines.
It’s surely a coincidence that, over the years, he has made millions promoting anti-vaccine views and referring clients to law firms that sue governments and pharmaceutical companies on behalf of parents of “vaccine-damaged” children.
Mr. Kennedy has been on a crusade against the CDC for years. He has called it a “cesspool of corruption” and claimed its officials are in bed with Big Pharma – all without evidence, it goes without saying.
Since becoming HHS Secretary this year, Mr. Kennedy has not just rewritten web pages. He has fired at least one-quarter of its staff, including the CDC director; dismantled its expert vaccine advisory panel; slashed the agency budget by roughly a third; cut the US$500-million research program for promising mRNA vaccines; slashed the infectious diseases program, both abroad and domestically (in the midst of the biggest measles outbreak in 30 years, no less); and, called for the CDC to abandon its chronic disease prevention activities.
Death by a thousand cuts, literally.
Mr. Kennedy is engaging in similar patterns of destruction at two other agencies he oversees, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, but not with the same fervour he has reserved for the CDC.
All this, presumably, to Make America Healthy Again.
Inviting back the spread of childhood illness and its related impacts – including the potential for childhood mortality – seems like an odd way of achieving this goal.
But it’s all about ideology. The desire to be free of any regulations you don’t like. The freedom to choose what you believe, even if it’s dangerously wrong. The supremacy of the individual, regardless of the cost to the collective.
Seems like Donald’s Trump’s prescription for an angry nation is an unhinged health secretary.
We can’t but shudder to think how much damage will be done before Mr. Kennedy is through with his crusade, or how long public health, in the United States and beyond, will take to recover and rebuild.