RFK Jr. questions vaccine safety at anti-vaccine organization gathering

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday returned to the the anti-vaccine group he founded, using a keynote address to signal the Trump administration isn't done questioning the safety of routine shots and expanding carveouts to federal mandates. Why it matters: Though Kennedy avoided some of his most politically incendiary rhetoric, the speech made clear that the Department of Health and Human Services is working hard behind the scenes to continue reshaping federal vaccine policy. He again questioned the safety of routine childhood vaccines and asserted they play a role in the development of chronic illnesses — questions that ignore decades of science supporting the vaccines' safety. Driving the news: Kennedy spoke for more than an hour Thursday afternoon at a Children's Health Defense meeting in Washington, D.C., highlighting the Trump administration's work on healthy food before turning to vaccines. He listed what the federal government is doing to reverse, in vaccine critics' eyes, decades of negligence on the issue. And Kennedy assured the audience that President Trump is fully committed to the cause. "He's directed us to pursue answers to strengthen vaccine safety, to expand options for families who want them and to preserve individual choice without federal mandates," Kennedy said. "Let me be clear: You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House." Between the lines: Kennedy addressed those frustrated with the administration's pace, in a nod to Make America Healthy Again movement members who feel he hasn't done enough to crack down on vaccines. "In government, a bunch of things have to happen before something else happens, or you get sued, and it's a very laborious system, and there's a lot of inertia built in," he said. "If we were able to overcome it, we would have changed things on day one, but those would have been short lived and I would have been out of a job." He certainly didn't sound like someone who's ready to leave office after the midterm elections, as has been rumored. The backing he appears to have from Trump himself reinforces that. "I didn't come to Washington to protect institutions from uncomfortable questions," he said. "I came to make those institutions answer those questions, and I intend to stay in this fight as long as I am able." Reality check: The vast majority of health experts and scientists say that the question of vaccine safety is settled, pointing to reams of evidence accumulated over many years. "It's a complete fabrication, because there's been so much data on vaccine safety," said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "But the overarching point is no matter how much evidence there is or that accumulates, it will not change RFK Jr.'s mind related to vaccines." The big picture: A pre-midterm pause on Kennedy's vaccine rhetoric ended weeks ago, when he stood with the president as Trump signed an executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccinations, splitting the childhood MMR vaccine into three shots and delivering vaccines at separate medical visits. Kennedy's speech mentioned numerous ongoing efforts within HHS to study vaccine safety, "including cumulative effects, longer-term health outcomes, uses of adjuvants, the safety of adjuvants, and many, many other issues." Researchers are also also "examining questions involving adjuvants, timing, vaccination during pregnancy, maternal immunity, timing and a range of health outcomes, from allergies to autoimmune diseases to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders," he added. The bottom line: Expect, at a minimum, results of Kennedy-requested vaccine safety studies to come out of HHS in the second half of Trump's term. Experts aren't expecting those studies to meet high scientific standards. "Anything RFK Jr. touches, I'm not confident of it's veracity," Adalja said. "I have zero confidence in anything that comes from his department."

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