Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump's pick to lead the nation's top health official, said he was worried about all the new coronavirus infections in the deadly phase of the pandemic, when thousands of Americans were still losing their lives. We have formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of a coronavirus vaccine. They die every week.
Kennedy filed a petition with the FDA in May 2021 asking the agency to revoke the authorization of the shot and refrain from approving any future coronavirus vaccines.
Just six months ago, Trump declared the coronavirus vaccine a miracle. At the time Kennedy filed his petition, half of American adults had been vaccinated. Schools have reopened and churches are full.
Estimates were beginning to show that the rapid rollout of coronavirus vaccines had already saved about 140,000 lives in the United States.
The petition was filed on behalf of Children's Health Defense, a nonprofit organization founded and led by Kennedy. The group argued that vaccines were not needed because their risks outweighed their benefits and there were better treatments available, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which were already thought to be ineffective against the virus.
The petition received little attention at the time it was filed. Kennedy was on the fringe of the public health establishment at the time, but officials denied it within months. Public health experts called the application shocking.
John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Kennedy's request to the FDA a “terrible error in judgment.” Greg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, compared Kennedy leading the federal health agency to “appointing an Earth observer to head NASA.”
Dr. Robert Califf, head of the Food and Drug Administration, said Mr. Kennedy's efforts to halt the use of coronavirus vaccines were a “grave mistake.”
Mr. Kennedy's transition spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but recently said he would not discuss vaccines.
In November, Kennedy was asked by an NBC reporter about the general opposition to coronavirus vaccines and whether he would halt their authorization, saying he was concerned the vaccines would not prevent people from contracting the virus.
“I wouldn't have blocked him directly,” he said. “I would have made sure we had the best science, but there was no effort to do that at the time.”
Kennedy's early opposition to the coronavirus vaccine alarmed public health experts, many of whom oversee health agencies that have the power to authorize, oversee and allocate funding for millions of vaccines each year. They argue that they should be disqualified.
They are also concerned about how he will deal with an avian influenza pandemic that could require rapid deployment of a vaccine.
Kennedy is preparing for confirmation hearings before two Senate committees, but he and his allies insist he is not anti-vaccine.
In fact, in mid-2023, he told a House committee that he had taken all recommended vaccines except for the COVID-19 shot.
Approval hearings are likely to scrutinize a wide range of statements about the vaccine, including statements that the polio vaccine has killed more lives than it has saved.
Trump spoke here after The New York Times reported that one of Kennedy's lawyers had previously petitioned the FDA to revoke the approval or suspend distribution of several polio vaccines, citing safety concerns. In recent weeks, he has come to the defense of Mr. Kennedy.
“I don't think he's as radical as you think he is,” Trump said last month.
After the Times report, Trump and Kennedy expressed support for the polio vaccine.
If confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy would take over oversight of $8 billion in funding for the childhood vaccine program and have the power to appoint new members to the committee that makes influential vaccine recommendations. I will have it. state.
When Mr. Kennedy objected to coronavirus vaccines, some of his objections touched on broader concerns about the rapid development of vaccines. The emergency use authorization (a preliminary form of approval) for vaccinations was unusual. Some argued that the public health emergency required a faster rollout.
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health, said it's fair to debate whether the COVID-19 vaccine should have been the subject of additional research.
But she strongly disagreed with Mr Kennedy's views, saying: “The idea that we can say at the beginning of 2021 that people over 65 don't need a Covid-19 vaccine is just ludicrous.”
Vaccines have rare side effects, and there have been cases of injuries caused by coronavirus injections. Government officials are weighing the harm and the chance of saving lives. Estimates released in early 2024 found that coronavirus vaccines and mitigation measures have saved about 800,000 lives in the United States.
Another study found that from late 2021 to 2022, the death rate from coronavirus among unvaccinated people was 14 times higher than among those who received a booster shot of the coronavirus. did. The researchers also estimated that more than 230,000 deaths could have been prevented between May 2021 and September 2022 among people who refused their first COVID-19 vaccination.
From the beginning of the coronavirus vaccination campaign, Mr. Kennedy's view that new vaccines were dangerous was at odds with Mr. Trump, whose Operation Warp Speed effort to develop a vaccine was one of his policy victories. And Mr. Kennedy launched a mass anti-vaccine campaign.
Kennedy told the Louisiana Legislature in late 2021 that the COVID-19 vaccine is “the deadliest vaccine ever created.”
He remains a plaintiff in the lawsuit against President Biden and others, challenging efforts by government officials to limit his ability to suggest on social media that coronavirus vaccines are unsafe.
In January 2021, Kennedy suggested on Facebook that the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron, 86, was related to the coronavirus vaccine he received 17 days earlier. He claimed this was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths” following the coronavirus vaccination. A doctor who received the vaccine along with Aaron and the county coroner rejected the claims.
In May, Kennedy petitioned the FDA to “immediately remove the coronavirus vaccine from the market,” echoed by Dr. Merrill Nass, a Maine physician and member of the Child Health Defense Scientific Advisory Committee. .
Her medical license was initially suspended in early 2022 for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to critically ill coronavirus patients, including intubated patients, according to Maine Medical Board records.
She then sued the board for retaliation for exercising her right to free speech. The lawsuit is pending.
In 2022, Kennedy and others filed a lawsuit against the FDA on behalf of child health advocacy groups and parents who were concerned that their children would be vaccinated against the coronavirus without their knowledge or consent. Ta. The amended lawsuit, filed in July 2022, sought a court order requiring regulators to reconsider the authorization of Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines for children.
The Texas Court of Appeals dismissed the case in early 2024, agreeing with lower courts that the plaintiffs did not face a “concrete or imminent” risk of harm. In June, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal.
Kennedy also sent a letter to the FDA threatening legal action if a vaccine for children is approved.
Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines for infants and children ages 6 months to 11 years remain in use under emergency authorization, and both companies have announced that they will continue to develop vaccines for all ages, according to an FDA spokesperson. He said he is aiming for full approval.
Kennedy alleges in his censorship lawsuit that Biden administration officials coerced social media platforms to silence him, primarily in the summer of 2021. At the time, vaccination rates were stagnant. Mortality rates began to rise among people who were not vaccinated. Some of those who died were young. Their loved ones said they were confused by conflicting messages on social media and regretted not getting the vaccine.
Records in the lawsuit outline a summer meeting between then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, in which they discussed misinformation affecting people. He criticized social media companies for allowing it to spread. Opposed to vaccination.
Dr. Murthy said on July 15, 2021, “And we can't wait any longer for them to take aggressive action, because it's going to cost lives.”
The next day, Biden expressed anger at reporters, saying social media companies that spread vaccine misinformation were “killing people.”
Kennedy has been named by a prominent advocacy group as one of the “disinformation dozen” and said in legal filings that he is one of the people targeted by the White House. Evidence in the lawsuit shows that White House officials turned to social media companies to remove false information.
Within a month, Facebook executives informed Dr. Murthy that they had removed many pages and groups, including Mr. Kennedy's, according to court records.
The Supreme Court dismissed a related case last summer, and the Court of Appeals dismissed Mr. Kennedy's case late last year. Lawyers representing Kennedy and others are currently taking depositions of about 30 people, mainly Biden administration officials.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Dylan Friedman contributed reporting.
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