RFK Jr.'s Rapid Vaccine Agenda Sets Stage to Chip Away at Shots

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s dismissal of a key panel that advises on immunizations policy is a significant step in implementing his longstanding blueprint to cast doubt on the effectiveness and safety of a broad range of vaccines.

“We’re dealing with a frog in the boiling pot situation,” said Brian Dean Abramson, a vaccine law professor at the Florida International University College of Law. “They’re going to chip away at both confidence and availability bit by bit.”

Kennedy this week shocked the health industry when he dismissed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel that guides US policy on vaccine safety and effectiveness, and named new members weeks before their next meeting to review Covid-19 and other vaccinations.

The dismissal of the ACIP members Monday and the restocking of the panel on Wednesday delivered on proposals laid out in Kennedy’s 72-page “Make America Healthy Again” report that highlighted conflicts of interest in vaccine recommendations tied to the pharmaceutical industry.

The MAHA report outlined areas that “warrant future inquiry” for vaccines that include analyzing clinical trials, surveillance of vaccine safety, and “scientific and medical freedom” under vaccine mandates.

Based on that report, his next steps are likely to address changes to clinical trials and more investigation into vaccine safety and the science that underpins approvals. The MAHA report also calls for expansion of the department’s autism data initiative to better study childhood chronic diseases.

“Right now, you’re choosing team members and getting set, but the game hasn’t been played yet,” said Del Bigtree, a close ally to Kennedy and communications director during his presidential campaign.

“The game is going to come down to the science, whether it’s double-blind placebo trials for future products, especially in the vaccine program, and figuring out ways how to do retrospective studies looking back at vaccines.”

Kennedy’s Blueprint

Kennedy’s move on ACIP comes after earlier decisions to yank a $766 million contract with Moderna Inc. to develop mRNA vaccines for avian influenza, pull the Covid-19 shot from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended immunization list for healthy children and pregnant women, and narrow an approval of Novavax Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine.

His actions followed years of vaccine skepticism that gained wider popularity since the Covid-19 pandemic. Kennedy has questioned the safety of many vaccines and linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, a theory that’s been widely debunked.

Much of Kennedy’s early scrutiny focused on vaccines using the mRNA technology that was hailed as a major breakthrough during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet increasingly seen by critics as unproven, high risk, and overly distributed.

Going after mRNA vaccines “provides a good scapegoat, in many ways, for other vaccines and fostering public mistrust for a larger group of products that RFK has already expressed ideological contempt for,” said Reshma Ramachandran, a physician and assistant professor of medicine at Yale.

To be sure, Kennedy’s belief that Covid-19 vaccines were too widely distributed isn’t isolated. As of May 1, more than 10,000 claims have been filed with the HHS alleging injury or death from Covid-19 vaccines. Most of those claims have yet to be reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The CDC’s website lists myocarditis and pericarditis as potential side effects of Covid-19 shots, though notes that they’re rare.

His move not to recommend the Covid-19 vaccine to healthy children was “the right decision based on the data,” said Robert Redfield, a virologist who served as CDC director in the first Trump administration and led the response to Covid-19.

Now a senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation—whose Project 2025 policy blueprint said the CDC wanted to force the “experimental” Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine onto children who aren’t at risk—Redfield said that while the mRNA shots “should be prioritized for vulnerable patients” and the elderly, it’s misleading to push to say “you need to get children vaccinated so they don’t infect grandma.”

In April, Kennedy hosted a press conference in which he said the HHS should have some answers as to what is fueling a rise in autism.

Though he didn’t address vaccines directly—instead listing off medicines broadly, along with ultrasounds, mold and other things as focuses of the research—critics point to his focus on autism as among the signs that he has broader ambitions for addressing how the US handles immunization.

A link between vaccines and autism has “been debunked for years,” said Alicia Ely Yamin, a Harvard law professor specializing in health.

“There’s clearly a broader agenda in shaping the way health decisions are getting made in this country,” Yamin said.

An HHS official told Bloomberg Law that Kennedy’s slashing of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine contract is part of a broader shift in federal funding toward vaccine platforms with more established safety profiles.

‘Far Beyond’ Covid Shots

In a Wednesday post on X, Kennedy named several new members for ACIP, including some who have been critical of vaccine approvals and one who identifies as an “anti-vaxxer.”

Though Kennedy said in a post Tuesday that none of the new picks would be “ideological anti-vaxxers,” he also said he would use X to post “examples of the historical corruption at ACIP to help the public understand why this clean sweep was necessary.”

“The most outrageous example of ACIP’s malevolent malpractice has been its stubborn unwillingness to demand adequate safety trials before recommending new vaccines for our children,” Kennedy wrote, arguing that committee recommendations on the increased load of vaccines in recent decades was made “without requiring placebo-controlled trials.”

Bigtree said ahead of the Wednesday announcement he expected Kennedy “to bring top level scientists and doctors that everyone on both sides of the aisle will respect and appreciate.”

Kennedy’s view that members of ACIP need to be replaced with more objective scientists with a greater command of the vaccine science data and literature, and who are less likely to make decisions based on belief, goes back years, according to a person who has worked with Kennedy and is familiar with his thinking on the topic.

As to where Kennedy’s vaccine-related actions may lead, the person explained he has long discussed conducting a vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated study using existing datasets, including the data in the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

Kennedy’s critics have blasted his dismissal of the ACIP members as a sign of the HHS leaning in to bad health policy and fueling discredited thinking on vaccines. An HHS official, however, said that final immunization policy decisions will ultimately rest with the department.

“What we’re seeing is a march towards significant changes in vaccine policy that I think stretches so far beyond mRNA or Covid vaccine,” said Richard Hughes IV, a member of Epstein Becker & Green PC and a former executive with Moderna.

‘Chilling’ for Industry

Taken together, Kennedy’s fast-moving decisions are likely injecting uncertainty into vaccine research and “potentially chilling investment and innovation in vaccine science,” said Tony Yang, professor of health policy at George Washington University.

Pharmaceutical industry groups have shared concerns about Kennedy’s decision to pull the Covid-19 vaccine from the immunization schedule for certain individuals, and now, removing members from a vaccine panel.

“Vaccines undergo rigorous testing and review by the FDA,” said Andrew Powaleny, spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “Upending the ACIP membership increases uncertainty and vaccine skepticism, undermining the health gains achieved through vaccination.”

Those outside the drug industry are likewise pushing for continued work on vaccines.

“While the government may not be a partner to the industry in the short-term, there needs to be continued scientific research using the technology and public education to correct misperceptions,” said Anand Parekh, former US health official who is currently chief medical adviser for the Bipartisan Policy Center.